Former President Trump has again taken a substantial lead over Florida’s governor in California. Ron DeSantis in the running for the Republican presidential nomination as party voters cast aside his legal troubles, a new poll shows.

Trump has the support of 44% of likely California Republican primary voters, while DeSantis was supported by 26%, according to the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Times. That’s a notable reversal from their position three months ago, when DeSantis led Trump by 8 percentage points among the state’s GOP voters.

The former president’s rise shows his ability to use the media to boost the voters most likely to support his third bid for the White House, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll.

Trump dominates the news, and I think he likes that, and I think he gets the sense that when he dominates the news, he’s probably expanding his coverage to his base, DiCamillo said. I think this poll pretty much proves that. Even if the news isn’t necessarily great, he can voice his own opinion about why things are the way they are, and the Republican base kind of believes him.

Although Californians are overwhelmingly Democratic, the state has millions of Republican voters. They could play a vital role in selecting their party’s candidate.

The state’s presidential primary is scheduled for March 2024, relatively early in the election cycle, and California will send 169 delegates to the Republican National Convention, the most of any state.

Twelve other Republicans were tested in the poll, including the former governor of South Carolina. Nikki Haley, who has formally declared her candidacy, and potential candidates former Vice President Mike Pence and former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming. None garnered the support of more than 4% of the state’s likely GOP voters. About 13% were undecided.

Trump’s rise in the poll comes after he was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney for fraud related to hush money payments during the 2016 campaign and after a jury ordered him to pay $5 million to magazine writer E. Jean Carroll for sexually assaulting him. from her in 1996 and later slandering her.

Nearly three in four Republican voters in California said it was impossible for the former president to get an impartial trial in New York. Two-thirds ignored the meaning of the sexual assault verdict.

That’s a view rejected by the rest of the state’s voters: About two-thirds of California voters overall said Trump could get a fair trial and that the verdict should be taken seriously.

What struck me was that during this three-month period, Trump was getting all this negative publicity from the sexual assault trial, and his image even went up among Republicans, DiCamillo said.

Since February, the share of Republican voters with a positive view of Trump has risen from 69% to 74%.

DeSanti’s preference score dropped from 79% to 75%. The biggest drop was in the share of Republicans who have a very favorable opinion of him, which went from 54% to 43% in the past three months, the poll found.

In contrast, only 27% of voters in the state generally have a positive view of Trump; 69% view him unfavorably.

A large majority of Republican voters, 86%, said Trump’s multiple investigations were more about politics and political revenge than law and justice, and 70% said the probes should be stopped for the good of the country because they nations worsen political division.

That position, too, was rejected by a large majority of voters across the state. Just over a third of California voters said they think the investigations are more about politics than law, and 37% think they should be stopped. About 6 in 10 said the investigation aims to hold Trump accountable for his unlawful actions.

Alongside the Manhattan district attorney, a U.S. Justice Department special counsel is investigating Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified documents and possible obstruction of a federal investigation at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, his attempts to reverse his election defeat. in 2020 and alleged plans to fraudulently solicit donations for its campaigns.

The Atlanta district attorney is also investigating Trump’s involvement in efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.

Seven in 10 California voters say it is at least likely that Trump committed a crime in one or more of those cases, and half say he definitely did, the poll found. Of Republican voters, 23% say it is likely, and 62% say it is unlikely.

Three-quarters of voters overall also say it’s important that Trump be held accountable for any illegal actions he may have committed post-election. Republican voters were split on that question, with 41% saying it was important and 46% saying it wasn’t.

As his legal troubles have increased, Trump has intensified his attacks on DeSantis in recent months. That seems to have given him a boost as Florida’s governor prepared to officially announce his presidential bid, a move he took with a glitch-filled session on Twitter on Wednesday.

Trump belittled DeSantis, trying to push him out and reject his potential candidacy. And DeSanti’s image went down among Republicans, DiCamillo said.

DeSantis supporters have argued that he could be a stronger candidate against President Biden than Trump. However, that argument doesn’t seem to have much impact on state GOP voters. Of the GOP’s likely primary voters, 71% say it’s most important to choose a candidate who best represents their views on important issues. Only 26% say it’s most important to nominate the candidate most likely to beat Joe Biden.

DeSantis has tried to appeal to conservative voters by taking positions as a prominent voice in the Republican culture wars.

He signed legislation banning discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity with elementary and high school students, prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory, reducing teachers’ tenure, prohibiting gender reassignment care for youth, and banning drag performances for minors. He also waged a high-profile war with Walt Disney Corp., one of the state’s largest employers, after the company balked at some of its educational restrictions.

But the conservative voters who are expected to like that policy are not turning to him, the new poll shows.

Trump leads DeSantis with 62% to 23% among likely California Republican voters who self-identify as strongly conservative. The former president also has a wide lead among men and among likely GOP voters who did not graduate from college.

Strongly conservative voters also have the most positive view of Trump, with 87% of those having a positive view of him, the poll found, compared to 56% of Republicans describing themselves as moderate.

DeSantis fares better with those moderates he roughly leads, even with Trump among the likely Republican voters in that group. He has a slight edge among those under 40 and trails close to Trump among college graduates.

All of that suggests that a significant portion of his support comes from Republicans who are not staunch DeSantis supporters, but are looking for a viable GOP rival for Trump.

This is a theory supported by the history of educated and affluent Californians who have traditionally voted for Republicans in suburban areas like Orange County who turned away from the party because of Trump in the 2016 presidential contest and in every election since.

Those moderates are looking for someone other than Trump, DiCamillo said.

The Berkeley IGS survey polled 7,465 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from May 17 to 22, including a weighted sample of 1,835 registered Republicans. mistakes are hard; however, the results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points in either direction for the full sample and 3.5 percentage points for the Republican sample.