Perhaps former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would be better off teaming up than fighting each other for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
A Trump-DeSantis unity ticket would handily defeat President Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in a hypothetical general election matchup, according to a new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports and Political Media Inc.
The survey found 51% of likely voters would pull the lever for Trump-DeSantis compared to 43% for Biden-Harris.
“Trump/DeSantis wins with women, independents, Hispanics and college grads and does historically well with African Americans,” said Larry Ward, President of Political Media Inc. He said that the unity ticket would also win the national popular vote, which would be a first for Republicans in 20 years.
Mr. Ward heads up the Constitutional Rights PAC which also runs “wewantdonron.com,” a website, whose goal is to promote the re-election of Mr. Trump with Mr. DeSantis as his running mate.
“After Trump hits his term limit, the plan is for Ron DeSantis to take up the mantle of President, ensuring that we can really make America great again — and keep it that way,” the site says.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the poll.
Mr. DeSantis has yet to launch his presidential campaign, but political action committee ads in support of him are already airing. Advisors running the Pro-DeSantis PAC did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Trump has an 8-point advantage with Mr. DeSantis on his ticket, which is outside the margin of error. The survey shows that in a head-to-head matchup without vice presidential candidates, Mr. Trump leads Biden 47% to 41%.
The survey also asked voters about two other potential 2024 vice-presidential pairings for Trump, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
A Trump-Lake ticket would beat Biden-Harris by five points, 47% to 42%.
Biden-Harris would win by four points, 44% to 40%, over a Trump-Greene ticket.
The survey of 1,050 likely voters was conducted on April 27-May 2. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
The poll was released nearly a week after the New York Post’s Page Six reported that a Trump source said that some of Mr. Trump’s supporters are suggesting he make a deal with DeSantis to make him VP and “he’s listening, but hasn’t agreed.”
The source noted that “supporters say the VP offer [would] stop DeSantis from opposing [Trump] and offer a ‘youthful conservative vigor’ to the slot, which Biden doesn’t have.”
Not everyone is convinced that a supposed Trump-DeSantis dream team will happen.
“There is a snowball’s chance in hell they share a ticket. Donald Trump would not reward someone he views as disloyal with a VP slot,” a Republican operative supporting Trump’s campaign told The Washington Times.
Other critics point out that both men live in Florida and the Constitution’s 12th Amendment states, “The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.”
This does not mean the two cannot be on the same ticket. Mr. Trump could win the GOP nomination, decides to tap Mr. DeSantis as his running mate and move to another state.
This happened in 2000 when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney both lived in Texas until Mr. Bush won the Republican nomination. Mr. Cheney then moved to Wyoming as Mr. Bush chose him as his running mate.
Their detractors attempted a failed legal challenge to Mr. Cheney’s claim to Texas’s Electoral College votes in the courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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