Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s drive for the White House may be gaining a little traction while Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign is spinning its wheels, new national polling figures suggest.
Kaplan Strategies, a bipartisan firm based in Kissimmee, surveyed 1,093 likely, overwhelmingly Republican, voters nationwide Tuesday and Wednesday this week. It was the first time Kaplan included Suarez in its questions.
The firm found that while Suarez is still largely unknown among the GOP electorate outside of South Florida, 2% would vote for him if the 2024 election were held today. That’s just 1 percentage point below U.S. Sen. Tim Scott and former Govs. Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson and 1 point above North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
It’s the highest Suarez has polled since entering the race in June, though many polls have not included him.
As was the case with a Kaplan poll released earlier this week, entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy has 11% support compared to 10% for DeSantis, who now holds the third-place position among likely voters in the GOP Primary contest.
Former President Donald Trump, who is facing criminal charges in four states, still leads the pack with 47% of likely GOP voters siding with him. Mike Pence, Trump’s former Vice President, has 6%. Former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has 5%.
Of note, 9% of respondents said they were “uncertain” about whom they’d cast ballots for if Election Day were now. The poll — paid for by Doral Republican Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez’s political committee, Ethics and Honesty in Government, also has a 3-percentage-point margin of error.
Of the three Florida men seeking the Republican nomination, none scored higher in favorability than the former President despite his legal woes. Sixty-four percent of respondents said they view Trump favorably compared to 32% who found him “somewhat” or “very” unfavorable. Just 4% said they had no opinion on the matter.
Meanwhile, 49% of those polled said they view DeSantis favorably. Thirty-eight percent gave him unfavorable ratings, while 13% said they didn’t feel one way or another about him.
Respondents remained mostly unfamiliar with Suarez, with a whopping 55% saying they were uncertain about whether they held a favorable or unfavorable opinion about him. Of those comfortable in their knowledge of him to offer their assessments of him, twice as many people said they didn’t like him as those who said they do.
Trump was the only candidate to exceed 20% support in every age group surveyed and among both men and women. The only other candidate to cross the 20% mark in that respect was Ramaswamy, for whom 37% of respondents 18-29 said they would vote today.
In terms of demographics, 65% of respondents were 50 or older, 67% had no more than an associate’s degree, 85% and self-identified as non-Hispanic White.
Seventy-two percent said they were registered Republicans. The remainder claimed to belong to another party or have no party affiliation.
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