Washington DC - Vice President JD Vance was touted as President Donald Trump's successor during a straw poll conducted during the hard-right Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Of 1,022 attendees at CPAC who were polled on whether JD Vance should be Trump's successor in the 2028 presidential elections, 61% voted in favor of his potential Republican nomination.

In second place was Trump's former White House chief strategist and ex-con Steve Bannon, who received 12% of the vote at the same conference where he gave a Nazi salute to cheers from the crowd.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were both in the running, but only sat at 7% and 3% respectively.

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The survey was conducted by pollster Jim McLaughlin, who took the stage at CPAC to announce the results.

"We asked folks who they thought would be the Republican nominee, who they preferred," McLaughlin told the cheering crowd. "And who is it? JD Vance."

"And why? Because he's viewed as the closest thing to Donald Trump – and that's exactly why."

CPAC 2025 was dominated by the Trump administration as well as far-right leaders from around the world, including Italy's Georgia Meloni, Reform UK's Nigel Farage, and even ex-British Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose time in office failed to outlive the shelf-life of a lettuce.

Vance opened the proceedings with a talk in which he hailed Trump's first month in office as "a hell of a lot of fun" and touted their supposed accomplishments.

"The president keeps us on a pretty breakneck pace," Vance said, before saying Trump "is acutely aware that the American people gave us a window to save the country, and that's exactly what we're going to do."