Former President Donald Trump has a commanding 28-point lead in New Hampshire’s Republican primary, the latest Saint Anselm College Survey Center poll found.
The survey found Trump with a 28-point lead in the crowded GOP primary with 47 percent support. That reflects a five-point increase from the 42 percent he garnered in March.
DeSantis falls 28 points behind, with his support dipping into the teens at 19 percent. According to the survey, this figure reflects a ten-point drop since March, resulting in a 15-point swing Trump’s way in the past few months.
“Former President Donald Trump is looking to repeat his successful 2016 pathway to victory of scattering opposition among several opponents,” the survey’s summary reads.
No other candidate comes remotely close. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie places third with six percent support, followed by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (five percent), South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (four percent), anti-woke businessman Vivek Ramaswamy (two percent), former Vice President Mike Pence (two percent), former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (two percent), and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (two percent).
DeSantis losing ground in the early primary state comes as he and Trump attend dueling events in the Granite State Tuesday. Trump is speaking at the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women’s (NHFRW) 76th Lilac Luncheon in Concord, and roughly 40 miles away, DeSantis is holding a town hall event in Hollis.
DeSantis’s decision to hold an event on the same day prompted criticism from NHFRW, which wrote a letter expressing “disappointment with the DeSantis campaign for scheduling a Town Hall Meeting in Hollis in opposition to their historic Lilac Luncheon” and urging him to reschedule.
Trump, during the luncheon, vowed to “obliterate the Deep State” and end the weaponization of the justice system, according to a copy of remarks from his address reviewed by Breitbart News. He also addressed DeSantis, or “DeSanctus” — short for DeSanctimonious — asserting that the Florida governor “opposed my China tariffs—very simply, he sided with the Communists in China.”
“I fought for the Workers of America. And when China targeted our farmers and Lobstermen, I gave them $28 billion straight out of the tariffs China was paying—DeSanctus opposed that too,” he continued.
Trump also emphasized that if one individual took the “five worst presidents in the history of the United States, and added them up, they would not have done near the destruction to our country as Joe Biden and the Biden administration have done.”
“This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country, we will rout the fake news media, we will defeat Joe Biden, and we will Drain the Swamp once and for all,” Trump added.