A poll released last week by CBS indicated that Donald Trump was leading with 61% of the voting intentions. He was followed by Ron DeSantis with 18%, Nikki Haley with 9%, Vivek Ramaswamy with 5% and Chris Christie with 2%.
After the exit of Senator Tim Scott and former Vice President Mike Pence from the Republican presidential race, only five politicians remain who hope to become the conservative candidate for the U.S. presidential election. Among them is former President Donald Trump, who is hoping to be re-elected and is currently ranked in the polls as the favorite, despite the four criminal proceedings against him.
A poll published last week by the CBS news network showed Trump leading the list with 61% of voting intentions. He was followed by Ron DeSantis, with 18%; Nikki Haley, with 9%; Vivek Ramaswamy, with 5%, and Chris Christie, with 2%. These figures, according to Efe news agency, are similar to the results published by CNN.
In both polls Scott appeared with a support between 3% and 4%, numbers that motivated the senator to put aside his presidential aspirations.
“I love America, but when I return to Iowa, it will not be as a presidential candidate. I’m suspending my campaign. I think the voters, who are the most remarkable people on the planet, have been very clear in telling me, ‘Not now, Tim,'” Tim Scott told Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy, broadcast on Fox News.
Tim Scott, a senator from South Carolina, dropped out of the race two weeks after former Vice President Mike Pence, who withdrew his candidacy in the Republican primary after recognizing that “it is not his time” to run for the White House.
Will Donald Trump continue to lead?
Aaron Kall, a political science expert at the University of Michigan, told Efe news agency that Scott’s exit could slightly benefit Nikki Haley because both are South Carolinians and share supporters.
“But Trump’s lead is so large, both nationally and in early primary states, that I don’t think it’s going to change the overall trajectory,” the expert said.
Likewise, Paul A. Beck, a professor of behavioral science at Ohio University, said that given the lead the former Republican president enjoys, it is unlikely that he can be beaten for the presidential nomination. By March, he said, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President of the United States.
Parallel to his candidacy, the former president faces four criminal trials: for illegal payments to the actress Stormy Daniels; for mishandling classified documents; for attempting to manipulate the results of the 2020 elections in Georgia and for his alleged interference to reverse the 2020 election result, a case that links him to the assault on the Capitol, reported Efe.
Those processes, the news agency indicated, seem not to negatively influence his popularity.