Donald Trump has torn ahead of his rival in the latest US Presidential 2024 poll - although Florida governor Ron DeSantis remains the bookies' favourite.
Surveys conducted since the beginning of the year show that former president Trump, 76, has overturned what had looked like a healthy poll lead for DeSantis, 44, since November's midterm elections.
While he was not expected to announce that he was a candidate until the summer at the earliest, DeSantis had sat comfortably ahead of Trump in a majority of polls.
A YouGov survey conducted late in December had DeSantis eight points ahead of Trump, a fall from his 23-point lead in early December.
A majority of the high-profile candidates endorsed by Trump flopped at the polls with voters seemingly put off by their dedication to their belief that Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 election.
DeSantis enjoyed a landslide victory in his home state.
A Morning Consult poll published this week showed that Trump had gained a lead of 13 points and 46 per cent of voters wanted him to be the Republican candidate next year.
DeSantis was favoured by 33 per cent while Mike Pence, Trump's former vice-president, was in third place on 9 per cent, the Times reports.
Polls are notoriously unreliable at this stage, with Trump only formally having entered the race and more than a year to go before the Republicans choose their candidate.
The swing back in Trump's favour comes amid a mixed start to the year for the former president and business mogul.
His favoured candidate Kevin McCarthy was elected as Speaker of the House of Representatives last week - after 15 rounds of voting.
The House has now followed through on a pledge to create a committee to look into bias in the federal government against conservatives.
A Trump acolyte, the Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, will chair the committee and take a critical look at the various investigations into Trump's conduct.
One such investigation was focused on the hundreds of classified documents that were uncovered at Trump's home in Florida when it was raided by the FBI last summer.
Just this week it was discovered that classified documents had also been found at a private office in Washington that was used by President Biden.
These documents dated back to Biden's time as vice president, it was found.
Last month, a report put together by The House Select Committee assigned to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol found that Trump failed to stop violent supporters from storming the Capitol and engaged in a conspiracy to overturn his failed Presidential bid.
The House Jan. 6 committee's final report asserted that Donald Trump criminally engaged in a "multi-part conspiracy" to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.
He is also said to have failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol, concluding an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago.
The 814-page report released Thursday comes after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained millions of pages of documents.
