A new poll from Marquette Law School has Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Joe Biden deadlocked in a virtual tie for the 2024 presidential general election — if the Republican and Democrat squared off in a hypothetical battle two years from now.
DeSantis and Biden both garnered a 42% share among the 1,004 people surveyed — including 840 registered voters, with a breakdown of 472 Democrat/368 Republican — whose opinions were chronicled over an eight-day cycle (Nov. 15-22).
For the remaining percentage of those surveyed, 11% said they preferred a different candidate in 2024, and 5% offered no response to this specific query.
DeSantis, who pulled down 59.4% of the vote in Florida's gubernatorial election last month, has made great strides with the national public in recent months.
For example, with Marquette executing a similar survey in January, DeSantis registered only 34% in a hypothetical one-on-one matchup with Biden.
There were other notable findings in the Marquette survey:
- When asked about a potential rematch of Biden and former President Donald Trump for 2024, surveygoers gave Biden (44%) a 10-point victory over Trump (34%). Within this hypothetical, however, approximately 20% of respondents reasoned they would choose another candidate in the general election — which seems unlikely, if there are no prominent third-party options.
- Conversely, 67% of the total respondents — regardless of party affiliation — would prefer that Biden doesn't seek a second term in the White House; and among Democrats, that sentiment was shared by 53% of those surveyed.
- When factoring in the opinions of all poll participants, 55% disapprove of Biden's 22-month stint in office.
- Regarding a hypothetical one-on-one matchup of DeSantis vs. Trump in the Republican primaries, 63% of respondents — regardless of party preference — want to see DeSantis emerge as the Republican National Committee nominee for 2024, compared to just 36% for Trump.
With the Republican primaries 13 months out, the various polls featuring Trump and DeSantis can be taken with a proverbial grain of salt.
After all, a large contingent of presidential hopefuls — such as former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem — could each make a run at the White House in January 2024.
And if that's the case, in some polls, Trump owns a 30-point lead when taking the entire Republican field into account for state-by-state primaries and caucuses.
The margin-of-error rate for the Marquette Law School survey is 3.7 percentage points.