The first state to vote in the 2024 Republican presidential primary has a clear and indisputable front-runner.
Former President Donald Trump leads in a Thursday poll of Iowa Republicans from Emerson College — and it’s not close.
Trump has support from a titanic 62 percent of Republicans in Iowa, who vote in a caucus.
His closest competitor — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — has 20 percent support, less than a third of Trump’s.
The polling suggests DeSantis has a long way to go in making the primary a competitive race. The governor is widely considered the only Republican with a serious chance of dethroning Trump in a presidential primary.
However, the poll conducted the query of Iowa Republicans between May 19 and 22 — a time frame before DeSantis’ Wednesday announcement of a formal presidential campaign.
A handful of alternate Republicans combine for less than 20 percent of support in the survey.
Trump also has a handy lead over President Joe Biden in a tentative general election match-up. Trump leads his own successor 49 percent to 38 percent in the poll.
DeSantis leads Biden in another match-up by 45 percent to 38 percent.
Trump won Iowa in 2020, cementing the state’s status as Republican-aligned. Mitt Romney was the last Republican to lose Iowa in the 2012 presidential election.
The other side of the partisan spectrum also shapes up as a lopsided affair in the poll.
Biden has a rock-solid support of 69 percent of Democrats in the poll. His closest competitor, Robert Kennedy Jr, lags well behind at a paltry 11 percent.
In a realignment of the traditional primary and caucus schedule, Democrats stripped the Iowa caucus of its first-in-the-nation status earlier this year, according to ABC News.
Iowa Republicans will still kick off the schedule for the GOP.
A total of 1,064 registered voters were surveyed in the poll, and its margin of error is 2.9 percent.
via magatribute
