Polls favorable to Trump a headache not just for Biden but for his Republican rivals, too

The challenge facing the Republican rivals to Donald Trump in Wednesday's debate in Miami appeared to grow steeper with a series of polls released over the weekend.

A New York Times and Siena College poll released Sunday showed Trump ahead of President Joe Biden in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Trump's leads in those battleground states, which proved decisive in the 2016 and 2020 elections, ranged from 3 to 10 percentage points.

On Saturday, a voter survey released by CBS News and YouGov showed only 18% of respondents saying they would be financially better off if Biden won, versus 45% who said the same about a Trump victory. And while just 31% said they believed a Biden win would improve prospects for global peace and stability, 47% said the same about a Trump triumph.

The results could be significant because they undermine a key argument GOP candidates like Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley have been pitching to Republican primary voters: that they are better candidates to represent the Republican Party a year from now because Trump is too unpopular to defeat the incumbent Democratic president.

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Team Trump immediately seized on the poll findings.

"These polling numbers deliver a stark illustration that every Republican dollar spent against President Trump in the Republican primary is a dollar stolen from our clear path to winning back the White House next year," said a statement issued by Taylor Budowich, the CEO of the Make America Great Again Inc. political-action committee.

"As President Trump said at the Florida Freedom Summit, 'It is time for the Republican establishment to stop wasting time and money trying to push weak RINOs and Never Trumpers that nobody wants on the ballot.' "

The Republican National Committee, however, is scheduling a fourth debate on Dec. 9 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Nonetheless, the Haley campaign sent out its own poll analysis highlighting that the former South Carolina governor would defeat Biden in the general election by a larger margin than either Trump or DeSantis.

“Republicans have a clear cut winner in Nikki Haley,” campaign spokesperson Nachama Soloveichik said in the statement. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are praying for a Trump or DeSantis nomination, and they are terrified of running against Haley.”

Still, other political analysts have said the slew of pre-2024 primary schedule polling results aren't exactly a stamp of approval for Trump. His unfavorable ratings remain high, as do Biden's.

Susan MacManus, professor emerita at the University of South Florida, said the the polls have "got to be frightening Democrats" but Trump also has high unfavorable ratings and a slew of legal pitfalls going into 2024. She reiterated past observations that all polls suggest Americans do not want to see a Biden-Trump round two next year.

"It is true every poll I look at shows people aren't looking forward to a rematch," said MacManus.

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MacManus also cautions against reading too much into voter surveys right now.

She said the party presidential nomination process is a series of state-to-state contests that depend on voter turnout, build their own momentum and feature varying demographics that evade easy pigeonholing or predictions by voter surveys.

One important indicator MacManus said she has seen are surveys in which Republican voters in Iowa say they are willing to consider DeSantis and Haley. Plus, prior presidential elections have shown voters are apt to change their minds as the process rolls on from debates to caucuses and primaries.

"They have to be driven by two things," MacManus said of Haley and DeSantis. "One, the primary cycle itself fields different demographics and can create momentum for someone. And secondly, they have to be driven by the fact that Trump still has the potential for running into some legal problems."

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While MacManus expects the economy and the global conflicts in Israel and Ukraine to be dominant issues on Wednesday evening in downtown Miami, the fact that the debate is taking place in Florida, and with the state's governor on the stage, will mean the party's high-profile anti-woke political agenda will also get a fair amount of discussion.

"I expect that the moderators are really going to poke them hard on the moral issues, the book bans and the trans policies, and particularly DeSantis," she said.

But she cautions against any candidate attacking the others on the stage too much.

MacManus said she attended the weekend's GOP summit in Orlando and noticed the audience did not find intraparty sniping endearing. MacManus advises the candidates on the stage Wednesday to fire at Biden, and to a lesser degree toward Trump.

"That's how I see this debate, as between DeSantis and Haley. He's casting her as a moderate. She's casting him as another Trump-like candidate," MacManus said. "But I don't think that Republicans in general are interested in that as much as if either of these two can beat Trump at this point."

DeSantis gets more bad poll news, this time in home state of Florida

A day before DeSantis and fellow GOP rivals gather for the Miami debate, a survey of Florida's Republican electorate suggests Trump remains the overwhelming favorite in his home state.

The poll of GOP primary voters by the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab, or PORL, showed Trump with a commanding 39-point lead. Some 60% of those asked chose the former president, with the current Sunshine State governor trailing at 21%, followed by Haley at 6%.

Two other Republicans, ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, registered at 2% and 1%, respectively. Ramaswamy was scheduled to campaign in a Little Havana neighborhood Tuesday evening.

“Despite historically high approval in the polls, Gov. DeSantis losing steam in his home state doesn’t bode well for his national campaign,” commented Michael Binder, PORL faculty director and UNF professor of political science, in a statement. "Even if you wipe out the rest of the competition in a head-to-head, Trump leads DeSantis by 20 points.”

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump topping Biden in polls a problem for Republicans DeSantis, Haley