Post-Indictment Poll Offers Incredible News for Trump - He Beats Biden But DeSantis Doesn't
A new poll on the 2024 presidential election suggests that Americans know a banana-republic-style indictment when they see one.
According to the Premise survey, conducted in the days after former President Donald Trump announced his impending arrest on federal criminal charges, Trump would beat President Joe Biden in the general election, while Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, widely perceived as Trump’s main primary challenger, would not.
Premise published the results of polling data collected Friday to Monday indicating Trump leads Biden by 6 percentage points, 43-37, while Biden maintains a 2-point edge over DeSantis, 36-34.
The survey’s methodology raises questions about its accuracy: The answers came solely from people using an app that pays them for their opinions, and the respondents weren’t likely voters — the preferred sample for political polls. No margin of error was provided.
“These results are based on responses from 1,918 Americans collected between June 9th and June 12th via the Premise smartphone application,” the pollster said. “Premise used stratified sampling of its opt-in panel members, along with post stratification weighting based on the American Community Survey to provide a representative sample. These results are weighted by Age, Gender, Region, and Education.”
And, of course, all polls published 512 days before an election must be swallowed with an industrial-sized grain of salt.
On the other hand, the finding that Trump is doing better against Biden compared with DeSantis has been seen in other surveys.
For example, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll published Wednesday found both Republicans losing to the president in the general election if it were held today — but Trump was closer than DeSantis.
Biden led the former president 34 percent to 32 percent — a 2-point difference — and had a 7-point lead over the governor, 33 percent to 26 percent, according to the poll.
The nationwide survey of 1,000 registered voters, taken June 5-9 by landline and cellphone, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points — more than the gap between Trump and Biden.
It’s worth noting that nearly 1 in 4 respondents to the USA Today poll said they would support a third-party candidate if the election were held today.
Of course, the election isn’t being held today, and a lot can happen in the 17 months between now and Nov. 5, 2024.
At this point in the 2016 presidential race, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was the leading Republican candidate and Trump was in 11th place with the support of just 1 percent of respondents.
Still, the Premise poll is interesting for what it seems to reveal about the public’s attitude toward the Trump indictment.
In the wake of the Durham report and all that has unfolded over the last seven-plus years, it seems that Americans recognize the Biden administration’s Stalinist tactics for what they are.
The Department of Justice — an ironic name if ever there was one — wants to prosecute Trump, the leading candidate to face Biden in next year’s general election.
Early polls suggest that many Americans view that effort as persecution.
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