Donald Trump remains dominant in the 2024 Republican primary for president, according to the latest national survey conducted by BIG DATA POLL for August. The former president leads Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, 55.8% to 12.3% and 11.4%, respectively.
All other candidates remain in single digits, while 1.3% chose “someone else” and only 4.5% remain “undecided”. Of those “certain to vote”, President Trump leads Governor DeSantis by a larger margin, 59.4% to 11.2%.
White voters back the former president 55.6% to 13.6% for DeSantis, but his strength with non-white primary voters remains his secret weapon. Hispanics support Trump by a whopping 60.1% to 7.3% for Ramaswamy and black voters 52.4% to 14.7% for Ramaswamy. Self-identified conservatives back the frontrunner 61.8% to 12.7% for the governor of Florida.
“Non-white voters are indicating they will participate in the Republican primary at historic levels,” BIG DATA POLL Director Rich Baris, said. “If this increased interest materializes into turnout, the former president could end up outperforming.”
“But regardless, this is simply not a competitive or close race, and appears to be the least competitive presidential primary in modern memory.”
Trump is supported by a majority in all four of the basic Age groups, with only 18-24 in Age Detail below majority support at 45.4%. He also leads across all educational and income groups, as well as area types and regions.
“Even this early, no frontrunner has ever lost a nomination with a lead this large,” Baris added. “There does not appear to be any cracks in the former president’s support nor obvious opportunities to dramatically change the trajectory of this primary following the latest round of indictments.”
The “Trump OR Bust” vote remains a serious problem for those in the Republican Party who aim to move on from the former president. Of those who support Trump in the Republican primary, 28.7% say they would rather cast a write-in vote for him than support another candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, another 3.5% say they simply would not vote.
Methodology
BIG DATA POLL interviewed 2,824 registered voters nationwide from August 19-21, 2023 via mixed-mode to include 2,765 likely voters screened by self-reported likelihood to vote and vote history. Interviews conducted online are sourced through Lucid (CINT) and phone interviews including P2P SMS and text-to-online are sourced from the Aristotle National Voter File Database. Likely primary voters were further screened for eligibility by registration and intent based on open and closed primary systems by state. Results were weighted for gender, age, race and ethnicity, education and income, geography and region. The overall sampling error is +/- 1.9% at a 95% confidence interval. The sampling errors for the Republican and Democratic Presidential Nominations are +/- 2.7% and +/- 2.8% at a 95% confidence interval, respectively. It is important to note that sampling errors for subgroups are higher. All BIG DATA POLL publicly conducted surveys are crowdfunded via the Public Polling Project, supplemented if necessary by BIG DATA POLL and are NOT funded by or affiliated with any candidate, campaign, committee, or political entity. Full and interactive crosstabs can be viewed on MarketSight.
