Former President Donald Trump has a double-digit lead in the hypothetical 2024 Republican primary race in Utah, an OH Predictive Insights survey released this week found.
They survey took an early reading of the general sentiments of Republican Utah voters, over a year ahead of the 2024 presidential primaries.
The survey listed 12 potential candidates, including Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), former Vice President Mike Pence, former Rep. Liz Cheney, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), former Gov. Chris Christie, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD), former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and celebrity Kanye West.
In that field, Trump takes a double-digit lead in the state, besting his closest potential challenger, DeSantis, by 13 percent, or 42 percent to the Florida governor’s 29 percent.
No other candidate came close, as Pence came in third with 11 percent support, followed by Cheney (6 percent), Cruz (3 percent), Haley (3 percent), Rubio (2 percent), Christie (1 percent) and Youngkin (1 percent). Everyone else garnered zero percent support.
“Among the likely suspects to run for president, it’s clear that anyone not named DeSantis or Trump will have an uphill battle to gain traction,” OHPI Chief of Research Mike Noble said in a statement, noting that much could change over the next year.
Per the survey:
Trump out-performs DeSantis by 24 points among 18-54 YO Utah Republicans and DeSantis holds a 5-point advantage over Trump with the 55+ YO’s. Trump also does comparatively better than DeSantis with Female Republicans by a staggering 29 points and is lagging with Male Republicans by 5 points.
The survey also found that most, 58 percent and 55 percent, respectively, would be happy if Trump or DeSantis were the Republican nominee in 2024. No other candidate garnered over 50 percent satisfaction for that scenario. Just 40 percent, for example, said they would be satisfied if Pence were the nominee, and 36 percent said the same of Cruz:
The survey was taken December 27, 2022, to January 4, 2023, among 600 registered Utah voters and has a +/- 4 percent margin of error. Of those, 302 were registered Republican voters, and that group’s margin of error is +/- 5.64 percent.
The survey coincides with a recent Harvard-Harris survey, showing Trump taking a clear lead over President Biden in a hypothetical 2024 presidential matchup, leading 46 percent to 41 percent: