Trump 2024 Support Tanks As Ron DeSantis Leads By 23 Points

Support for former President Donald Trump among Republicans and conservatives appears to have declined severely in a new poll that shows him trailing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that DeSantis leads Trump with 56 percent support to the former president's 33 percent among Republican voters and independents who identify as either conservative or very conservative.

That represents a 23-point lead for the Republican governor, who has long been talked about as a potential future GOP presidential candidate and has recently been publicly criticized by Trump.

Among that same group of voters, 65 percent want to see the Florida governor run for president in 2024, while 23 percent did not want him to run and 11 percent were undecided.

Forty-seven percent said they wanted Trump for the White House in 2024, a further 45 percent said they did not and 8 percent were undecided.

The survey polled 374 Republicans and independents who lean Republican and the margin of error for that group was plus or minus 5.1 percent.

The poll also contained some bad news for President Joe Biden, with DeSantis leading the president among all poll respondents in a hypothetical 2024 match-up.

The Republican enjoyed 47 percent to Biden's 43 percent among 1,000 registered voters surveyed from December 7 to December 11, while 7 percent were undecided, 1 percent said they wouldn't vote, 2 percent said they would vote for someone else and 1 percent refused to answer.

Polling results among registered voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.

"There's a new Republican sheriff in town," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, in a statement published on Tuesday.

"DeSantis outpolls Trump not only among the general electorate, but also among these Republican-leaning voters who have been the former president's base. Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump."

Newsweek has asked former President Trump's office for comment.

The USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll also found that support for Biden to run again in 2024 had declined among Democrats to just 40 percent—down from 45 percent in October.

Just 23 percent of registered voters want Biden to run for a second term in 2024, while 67 percent do not want him to stand.

Those figures are similar to the findings of a recent Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll conducted for Newsweek that found 58 percent of eligible voters don't believe Biden should run for president in 2024.

Newsweek has asked the White House for comment on the poll.

Nonetheless, Biden leads Trump in a hypothetical 2024 election rematch in the Suffolk University poll by 47 percent to the former president's 40 percent, with 4 percent undecided and 5 percent saying they'd opt for someone else, 4 percent said they wouldn't vote and 1 percent refused to answer.