Campaign

Trump, DeSantis both trail Biden in Morning Consult polls

A Morning Consult poll released Tuesday found both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis trailing President Biden in head-to-head matchups.

The poll found Trump trailing the current president by 2 percent in a head-to-head hypothetical matchup among registered voters. DeSantis falls behind Biden further, by 5 percent. 

Trump is the runaway leader at this early stage of the GOP presidential primary, while DeSantis is his closest competitor.

The polls are both close, and show that many voters are undecided or want to vote for a third candidate.

In both match-ups, 10 percent or more of voters said they would vote for somebody other than Biden or his Republican challenger; 4 percent said they don’t know which candidate they would vote for in the hypothetical race between Trump and Biden, while 7 percent said they didn’t know who they would back in a DeSantis versus Biden race.


“Voters are slightly more uncertain about who they would support or say they would opt for ‘someone else’ when Biden is matched up against DeSantis,” the analysis on the poll read.

Other findings in the poll included Trump leading the GOP pack by a wide margin, pulling in 57 percent support, with DeSantis following at 14 percent and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in third with 9 percent. 

The poll, taken from Sept. 8-10, features answers from 3,715 potential Republican primary voters and roughly 6,000 registered voters. The unweighted margin of error for both polls is 2 percent and 1 percent, respectively.