This week, a new poll was released showing that the three top contenders for the GOP nomination, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley are all beating Joe Biden in head-to-head match-up polls.
But, Nikki Haley has the strongest lead. This is the latest poll showing Haley with a significant advantage in the general election. A CNN/SSRS poll from September that also showed Nikki Haley performing better against Joe Biden than any of her Republican rivals, as well. Another poll showed Haley besting Trump among independent voters in a general election match-up with Biden.
According to the new Marquette University poll, Nikki Haley beats Joe Biden 55% to 45% (+10), Donald Trump leads 52% to 48% (+4) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis beats Biden 51% to 49% (+2). The poll also found that, among likely voters, her advantage increased to 12 points. While Trump doesn’t perform the best against Biden, he’s still the runaway frontrunner for the nomination, reports Marquette: "Among registered Republican voters, Trump maintains a substantial lead over all others in the primary field for the GOP nomination, with 54% of the total. DeSantis and Haley are tied at 12%. That represents a rise for Haley and a decline for DeSantis since March. No other candidate has more than 4% support in the current poll."
But here’s what I found to be most interesting part of the Marquette survey. The poll found that Joe Biden gets support from 85% potential Democratic voters, while Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are supported by 96% of Republicans. Donald Trump, however, has the support of 92% of Republican voters. The four-point gap in support from Republicans between Trump and his GOP rivals suggest that there are Republican voters who don’t want to vote for Trump. In what is expected to be a close election, that’s a potential problem.
Various polls have shown a close race between Trump and Biden that is very much in flux, with Trump’s lead in the Real Clear Politics average never getting above +2.5 points, and Biden’s never going above +2. Currently, it’s Trump +1.6%, and he’s lead anywhere from 1 to 6 points in eight of the last ten polls tracked. There are fewer match-up polls of Haley vs. Biden, but her RCP average is +4.2 over Biden.
There no point in denying that Trump is heavily favored to win the GOP nomination. If Haley continues to poll so well against Biden in match-up polls, it stands to reason that she’d be a potential running mate choice for Trump, and that could help boost Trump with Republicans who are hesitant to vote for him and independents.
One factor that could change the significance of this poll, however, is the fact that the poll was conducted November 2-7, before Haley infamously said she believes “every person on social media should be verified by their name.”
“When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say,” she insisted. "And it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots, and the Chinese bots. And then you’re going to get some civility when people know their name is next to what they say, and they know their pastor and their family members are going to see it.”
It was a disastrous comment and Haley has tried ever since to backtrack and clarify her proposal, and it remains to be seen whether it will significant impact her polling in a negative way or not. At the moment, it seems hard to see how she could recover from it, but voters tend to have short memories.
