Fox News Confronts DeSantis on Low Poll Numbers

Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis is seemingly not bothered by early polling numbers that show him trailing far behind former President Donald Trump.

The Republican leaders are considered to be the top choices for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, but Trump has enjoyed a substantial lead over DeSantis and the rest of the crowded Republican field since launching his reelection campaign.

While appearing on Fox News Wednesday afternoon, DeSantis sidestepped a question from host Martha MacCallum regarding if he was feeling "frustrated" by preliminary polls and instead focused on his campaign's "mission" for running.

"Our mission is very simple," DeSantis told MacCallum, while slightly shaking his head "No". "We're going to defeat Biden, we're going to get all this stuff done for the American people. No more excuses. Republicans need to win elections again, and we need to actually bring all these important issues from the border to crime, to the economy, in for a landing."

A clip of DeSantis' response was shared on Twitter by The Recount.

The Florida governor did receive some good news out of the key swing state of Wisconsin on Wednesday, according to a Marquette University Law School poll that surveyed 913 registered voters in the state earlier this month. Out of the Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents, the primary field was nearly split, with 31 percent of respondents indicating support for Trump while 30 said they support DeSantis.

Wisconsin voters also gave DeSantis a better chance against President Joe Biden, who is assumed the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. In a hypothetical matchup, respondents were closely split between Biden (49 percent) and DeSantis (47 percent), while Trump trailed the current president by a larger deficit (52 percent to 43 percent).

A separate survey released by NBC News on Monday, however, showed Trump had increased his lead in the national polls during the month of June. Out of the 500 Republican primary voters surveyed, Trump was the first choice for 2024 by 51 percent of respondents, a 5-point increase from an NBC News poll in April.

Meanwhile, DeSantis was the first choice among 22 percent of GOP primary voters interviewed by NBC News, a 9-point decrease from two months prior.

According to the poll analysis site FiveThirtyEight, Trump holds 51.9 percent of national support in preliminary Republican primary surveys, while DeSantis sits at 23.8 percent. FiveThirtyEight's analysis is calculated according to polling data collected in the past 30 days, and each poll's recency, sample size and methodology are taken into account to produce a candidate's national average.

Speaking with reporters earlier this month, DeSantis brushed off a separate question about him trailing Trump by saying that it was too early to rely on polling data.

"You don't do a poll a year out and say that's how the election runs out," the governor said, according to a report from Politico. "I mean if that were the case I wouldn't have been elected in the first place as governor."

Newsweek reached out to DeSantis' campaign via email for comment.