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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was handed a much-needed victory by Utah Republican delegates on Saturday, who placed him above former President Trump as the potential 2024 GOP nominee for president.
While Utah Republicans gathered at the 2023 Utah Republican Convention, they were asked who they’d cast a vote for as the 2024 GOP nominee for president in a straw poll. DeSantis won with 1,197 votes or 54.6 percent. Trump came in second place with 655 votes, or nearly 30 percent. Deseret News reporter Joshua Lee took to Twitter to share the results.
Although DeSantis has not officially announced a 2024 presidential run, the governor has recently been touring the country in what many have assumed is a prelude to an official campaign announcement. However, DeSantis has been losing ground to Trump before the race officially gets underway, with recent GOP primary polls showing him being defeated by the former president by wide margins.
Trump has also been overwhelmingly winning the battle for endorsements, most notably among Florida Republicans. Only one GOP member of the state’s congressional delegation, Representative Laurel Lee, has backed DeSantis.
The former president has racked up endorsements from eight U.S. House members in Florida alone: Greg Steube, Vern Buchanan, Anna Paulina Luna, Matt Gaetz, Cory Mills, John Rutherford, Brian Mast and Michael Waltz.
Newsweek has reached out to Governor DeSantis’s office via email for comment.
Political analyst and Florida Atlantic University professor Craig Agranoff told Newsweek on Saturday, “The recent straw poll in Utah showed that Ron DeSantis is a popular choice among Republican voters, but the endorsements of Florida lawmakers for Donald Trump could swing momentum in his favor.”
“DeSantis is a rising star in the Republican Party, but he is still relatively unknown outside of Florida. It will be interesting to see how the race unfolds in the coming months,” Agranoff continued.
It should be noted that any endorsement comparison at this stage is perhaps unfair as Trump announced his candidacy in November 2022, whereas DeSantis has yet to confirm a presidential run.
Meanwhile, former President Trump has repeatedly taken to his social media platform Truth Social to tout his recent jump in the polls over DeSantis. On Saturday, Trump shared the latest Clarity Campaign Labs poll showing a 45 percent lead over DeSantis.
Concluding his thoughts on DeSantis, Agranoff said, “He’s also a very competitive person and he’ll likely use the Trump endorsements as motivation to work even harder to win the Republican nomination.”
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