A new poll conducted in the immediate aftermath of the leaked news about the Manhattan grand jury criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump showed that his support has surged dramatically while support for his likely chief Republican rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has plummeted, Breitbart reported.

Trump formally launched his 2024 presidential campaign in November following the midterm elections and has been the clear frontrunner for the GOP nomination ever since.

DeSantis has yet to formally announce his own candidacy, but it is widely anticipated that he will soon do so and polls have consistently shown that he is the only other actual or prospective Republican candidate to receive substantial support as an alternative to Trump.

Trump support surges post-indictment

The latest poll from Reuters/Ipsos surveyed 706 American adults between March 31-April 3, with a credibility interval of 2.7 percent either way, and asked respondents who they would choose as their preferred Republican presidential nominee from a list of declared and potential candidates.

The pollsters found around 48 percent of those polled supported former President Trump compared to 19 percent who supported Gov. DeSantis -- a massive spread of 29 points between the two frontrunners.

That spread is nearly double what it was in that same poll just two weeks earlier, as Trump held a lead of 14 points over DeSantis with the support of 44 percent compared to 30 percent for his rival.

As those numbers showed, the former president gained about 4 points of additional support following the news of the criminal indictment against him while the Florida governor hemorrhaged 11 points in lost support.

REUTERS/IPSOS POLL: Donald Trump holds 29-POINT lead over Ron DeSantis

March 20:
• Trump — 44% (+14)
• DeSantis — 30%

APRIL 3:
• Trump — 48% (+29)
• DeSantis — 19%

• Other likely rivals polled in the single digits. (Mar 31-Apr 3, n=706)https://t.co/SGXiQZab66 pic.twitter.com/xqgm7ewfn0

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) April 4, 2023

Separate poll tells similar story

Breitbart noted that the results of the Reuters/Ipsos poll weren't too dissimilar from the results of a Yahoo News/YouGov survey of 1,089 American adults in the immediate wake of the Trump indictment news, March 30-31, with a 3.3 percent margin of error.

Those pollsters found that in a one-on-one matchup, Trump would defeat DeSantis by a 26-point margin, 57-31 percent. And, when added into a broader 10-candidate field, the former president actually prevailed over the Florida governor by a slightly larger 31-point margin, 52-21 percent.

In comparison, just two weeks prior in the same poll, Trump had led DeSantis by just eight points in a head-to-head matchup, 47-39 percent, while just a little more than a month ago in February DeSantis had actually held a slight lead over Trump, 45-41 percent.

RCP average gives Trump a 26-point lead

Both of those recent surveys track well with the aggregate results of RealClearPolitics' average of GOP primary polls, which currently shows Trump with a 26.2-point lead over DeSantis, with an average of 50.8 percent support for the former president compared to an average of 24.6 percent for the Florida governor.

RCP's graphed timeline of all of the actual and likely GOP candidates also clearly shows a sharp spike in support for Trump that begins on March 30, the day it was announced that the Manhattan grand jury had voted to indict him, as support increased from 45.9 percent on that day to the current 50.8 percent.

Likewise, the graph also reveals a concurrent slide in support for DeSantis over those same few days, as his support fell from 30.1 percent on that day to the current 24.6 percent support.