Hedge fund investor and anti-ESG crusader Vivek Ramaswamy entered the top-tier of not-Trump Republican candidates when he was the choice of 12 percent of 800 likely Republican voters in a new poll—the same level of support for Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—as both men trail President Donald Trump’s 48 percent.
The rest of the field came in as follows, when responding to the question, “If the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary were held today, for whom would you vote?” Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, 5 percent; South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former vice president Mike Pence, 5 percent; former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, 3 percent, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, 1 percent and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, no support.
Kaplan Strategies conducted the poll with an online panel of cell phone users using web and text responses. The poll has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points from July 17 through July 18.
“President Donald Trump continues to lead the field with 48 percent, which is no surprise,” said Doug Kaplan, the founder of Kaplan Strategies, the firm that conducted the poll.
The surprise is that in the field of nine candidates we asked about, Ramaswamy has more than twice the support of six of the other hopefuls.
People talk about DeSantis fading, but he is still in the top-tier of not-Trump candidates, but now he has a peer. Really the question is, how will each camp react? I mean, will DeSantis and Ramaswamy start targeting each other?
Kaplan said the poll showed that Ramaswamy may have a higher ceiling, given that Republican voters are still not familiar with him.
DeSantis was rated Very Favorable by 23 percent and Somewhat Favorable by 36 percent, putting him at 59 percent favorable with GOP voters with only 10 percent Uncertain.
Ramaswamy came in with 17 percent Very Favorable and 39 percent Somewhat Favorable, so he was rated favorable by 56 percent of the respondents—roughly the same as DeSantis. However, 27 percent of the people we surveyed were Uncertain, which really means they just don’t know the guy. That makes it up to him or someone else to let people know who he is.
The Uncertain numbers for the other candidates tell another tale, putting their poll numbers in perspective: Burgum, 72 percent; Hutchinson, 61 percent; Scott, 38 percent, Haley, 31 percent, Christie, 22 percent and Pence, 8 percent.
Pence seems to have the lowest ceiling, with 92 percent of Republicans already making up their minds about him.
The other takeaway in the poll is the continued strength of Trump with Republican voters, despite the large field challenging him, according to Kaplan:
Forty-two percent of Republicans have a Very Favorable view of Trump with 27 percent having a Somewhat Favorable view of him—and it is no surprise at all that only 2 percent told us they were Uncertain about him. These bottom-tier candidates are really just nickel-and-diming Trump and the other two.
As time goes on, they will drop off and those voters will either go home to Trump or find a new home with Ramaswamy or DeSantis.
The poll was paid for by Kaplan Strategies.