Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump
Ron DeSantis and Donald TrumpREUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

A new poll has found that Republican support is shifting away from Donald Trump to Ron DeSantis, with GOP voters preferring the Florida Governor over the former president by double digits.

According to the USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll conducted last week through Sunday, GOP support for Trump’s 2024 presidential bid is tanking, as his popularity is taking hits from the party's poor midterm election showing and his mounting legal woes.

Republican voters who were surveyed said by a margin of 2-1 that while they still agree with Trump’s policies, they want a different leader to continue into the 2024 presidential election. Only 31 percent support Trump’s bid to return to the White House, with 61 throwing their support behind another candidate who would carry on with Trump’s policies.

DeSantis was the GOP leader who garnered the most support as a presidential candidate among GOP voters, with 56 percent of those polls saying that they would vote for the Florida governor to become the party’s 2024 nominee. Only 33 percent chose Trump, demonstrating a significant downward trend in the former president’s support among registered Republicans.

"Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, according to USA TODAY.

He added that DeSantis’s ability to win the GOP nomination likely hedges on whether he finds himself in a primary contest against only Trump or a crowded field of candidates.

"Add in a number of other Republican presidential candidates who would divide the anti-Trump vote and you have a recipe for a repeat of the 2016 Republican caucuses and primaries, when Trump outlasted the rest of the divided field,” he said.