Leading Democrats For 2024 If Joe Biden Does Not Run: Poll
If President Joe Biden decides not to seek a second term, Vice President Kamala Harris would be the choice to represent the Democratic Party in the 2024 presidential election, according to a new poll.
While Biden has indicated he plans to seek another four years in the White House, he is likely to come under added pressure to stand aside if the Democrats perform badly in the November midterms.
Just 22 percent of Americans want Biden to run again in 2024, with 61 percent opposed, according to a Decision Desk HQ poll, commissioned by NewsNation.
The survey of 1,000 registered voters, conducted between July 22 and 24, asked respondents who they’d prefer as the Democrat candidate if Biden doesn’t run.
Harris, who received 16 percent of the poll’s votes, was followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders at 11 percent, California Governor Gavin Newsom at 9 percent and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at 8 percent.
A majority of Americans also are against former President Donald Trump running again in 2024, with 57 percent opposed while 35 percent are in support.
If Trump doesn’t run, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is the lead Republican with 23 percent, followed by former Vice President Mike Pence at 21 percent.
All the other Republican candidates are far behind, with former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in third with 5 percent.
A Democrat Who Can Beat Trump
Why Amy Klobuchar still has a chance.
Opinion Columnist
If youre like a lot of Democrats, you worry that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are too liberal or at least that other voters think so. Youre also not buying the Pete Buttigieg hype. And you get nervous every time Joe Biden opens his mouth.
So where are you supposed to find a comfortably electable, qualified candidate who wont turn 80 while in office?
Senator Amy Klobuchar has become an answer to that question in the final month before voting begins. She has outlasted more than a dozen other candidates and has two big strengths: A savvy understanding of how to campaign against President Trump and a track record of winning the sorts of swing voters Democrats will likely need this year.
Klobuchar, to be sure, is not a finished product as a presidential candidate. Too often, she sounds like a senator speaking in legislative to-do lists rather than a future president who can inspire voters. That tendency along with too much needling of other candidates, instead of focusing on her own message was evident in the most recent debate.
In that way, she reminds me of another Midwestern senator who once seemed too ordinary to be president: Harry Truman. In the summer of 1944, an even more perilous time for global democracy than now, Democratic Party grandees chose Truman as vice president with the belief that he would soon be president, given Franklin Roosevelts declining health.
Biden Calls For Election Of Lawmakers Who Will Codify Roe V Wade
To be fair, he has accomplished several important things since taking office, such as building an international coalition to fight Vladimir Putin in Ukraine while keeping China on the sidelines. His aggressive push to get more people in the U.S. vaccinated has also been a huge success 67% of the population are now fully vaccinated, and 78% have received at least one dose. Another major win was his signing into law the first major gun safety measure in more than 30 years. And finally, perhaps most importantly, Biden has returned a sense of normalcy to the presidency after the tumultuous Trump era.
However, in other key areas, the president has failed to meet the moment by not adequately addressing important kitchen table issues across the country. His anemic response to concerns about rising gas prices has been a point of contention that cuts across party lines, as have his plans for combating inflation, of which now nearly 3 in 4 Americans disapprove, according to an ABC News poll.
His milquetoast response to the overturning of Roe vs. Wade falls short of some of the more aggressive tactics championed by Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives, such as expanding the Supreme Courtor moving abortion clinics to federal lands.
On the other hand, his inability to reign in his partys progressive wing is turning off critical swing voting blocs, including Latinos.
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The Extremely Obvious Case For Joe Biden In 2024
Democrats already have a candidate who can beat Donald Trump in the next election. Do they realize it?
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Im old enough to remember when the media buried the Biden presidency. That is to say, I was around two months ago.
On June 11, The New York Times ran a story with the provocative headline: Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of No Start to Rise. The piece appeared on the front page of the print edition, and quickly kicked off a weeks-long frenzy of fevered speculation over who should replace the sitting president on his own partys ticket. Politicoreported that a progressive group was preparing a campaign to pressure Joe Biden not to run. Slateranked nine different Democratic politicians who could replace him. The Washington Postlisted 18. My colleague Conor Friedersdorf solicited 20 such recommendations from Atlantic readers. And the less said about Twitters predictable meltdown, the better.
The full-fledged anti-Biden freak-out culminated in a New York Timespoll, which found that 64 percent of Democrats wanted someone else to run for president in 2024. To many, this was the nail in the coffin. Biden had not just lost the country. He has lost his own party.
I had a different response to the New York Times poll, because I noticed another finding in it that went mostly overlooked, buried in the 16th paragraph of the papers story:
From Opinion: The Trickiness Of Electability
In this new weekly feature, our colleagues from The New York Timess Opinion section will share expert analysis and perspectives from across the political spectrum. In todays installment, theres more to read about why electability is so unpredictable.
There is a home base that all the conversation about the Democratic presidential primary comes back to in the end: Primary voters prioritize, above all, someone who can defeat President Trump.
In any election that features an incumbent president, the main goal of the out-of-power party is to nominate a candidate well-suited to defeating the incumbent. Thats why both Republican Party elites and less enthusiastic conservative voters got behind Mitt Romney after a series of polls in 2011 showed he was the only Republican beating President Barack Obama in head-to-head matchups.
This year, Democrats desire to replace the incumbent has reached a fever pitch, arguably higher than its ever been for either party. But paradigm-shifting presidents have complicated the idea of electability, as Adam Jentleson, a former deputy chief of staff for Senator Harry Reid, pointed out this week in an Op-Ed.
Mr. Obama won his first election despite being a black man who had admitted to using cocaine, who was caught on tape calling working-class whites bitter people who cling to guns and religion, and who sat in the pews with a pastor who declared, God damn America, Mr. Jentleson said.
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Entrance Poll Shows Demand For A Candidate Who Can Beat Trump
The rest of Sandersâ 2016 voters were divided among Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana and former Vice President Joe Biden.
The data pointed to a generational divide as voters under 30 said they supported Sanders while voters ages 65 and over said they favored Biden.
The entrance poll found Sanders capturing the support of about half of caucusgoers ages 17 to 29 48 percent with Buttigieg, Warren and Biden trailing well behind.
A Divided Democratic Camp
Biden, initially expected by many Americans to blaze ahead as the Democratic nominee, trailed rivals Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren in the Iowa caucuses last week. Polls in New Hampshire, which will hold its primary Tuesday, show Biden on the verge of another relatively weak finish, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
And new national polls show Sanders pulling ahead of Biden for the first time.
Bloomberg, meanwhile, joined the race late in the game and wonât be appearing on any ballots until Super Tuesday on March 3, but heâs rising in the polls after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into his campaign. In a recent poll of small-business owners, the billionaire businessman was the only Democrat to top Trump. The poll, conducted in January, showed 52% of respondents said they favored the former New York mayor, according to Gallup and payments tech firm Square.
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The Win Test: Which Candidate Can Convince Democrats They’ll Beat Trump
Democrats in early contest states overwhelmingly say they want a candidate who can beat President Trump, and voters in our latest Battleground Tracker assessed the chances of the candidates they are considering. A nominee’s prospects are not an easy thing for voters to gauge even professional campaign consultants and politicos have a challenge doing it. But in a year when Democrats seem so focused on electability, a key test for candidates this debate season will surely be convincing Democratic voters they’re up to that task.
At the moment, former Vice President Joe Biden elicits the most confidence from his potential backers: 75% of those considering a vote for Biden think he “probably would win” against Mr. Trump, and another quarter think “maybe” he could win.
These figures are among voters who are currently considering supporting each of these candidates, respectively. So even when some of their prospects don’t seem overwhelmingly high, these voters are still considering the candidate nonetheless. But it also shows that many of these candidates have work to do building confidence in their ability win, if they’re to convert consideration into solid support.
If Either Runs All Other Democrats Face Steep Climb For Nomination
ANALYSIS More than a handful of Republicans are already sniffing around the 2024 presidential contest.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Sen. Rick Scott and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are just some of the Republicans who might launch White House bids if former President Donald Trump doesnt seek a second term. And some of them might take the plunge even if Trump does seek the nomination again in two years.
The Democrats, of course, have a very different situation. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are incumbents, so the party doesnt have a long list of hopefuls for 2024.
Given Bidens age and his current standing in the polls, as well as Harris mixed reviews, thats not an ideal situation for Democrats.
First, lets deal with the obvious. If Biden wants his partys nomination in 2024, its probably his for the asking. Sitting presidents normally arent denied renomination.
The last serious challenge to a sitting presidents renomination came in 1980, when Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy challenged incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Kennedy won a dozen primaries, including those in Pennsylvania, New York and California, but Carter piled up delegates in Southern primaries and early caucus states, winning renomination comfortably.
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Mike Bloombergs Money Can Buy A Lot But Probably Not The Nomination
Big business loves politics because sums that amount to pocket change in major industries buy big influence in Washington. Mr. Bloomberg is investing unheard-of sums in his race he has more staff members than any other campaign, and his ads are everywhere. That spending has quickly elevated his poll numbers.
But there can be diminishing returns on spending: In 2016, Hillary Clinton outraised Mr. Trump three-to-one and lost. Mr. Bloombergs record is dicey: He spoke at the 2004 Republican convention, praising George W. Bush and his war on terrorism. His stop and frisk regime was so brutal and discriminatory, it was struck down by a federal court as violating its victims civil rights. His presence supercharges the message from Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren that billionaires are buying our democracy. He could win enough delegates to be a player at a contested convention, but its unlikely he can win a majority and if the Democratic Party gave the nomination to a billionaire who supported Mr. Bush, it might as well shoot a big chunk of the Democratic electorate into space and hand Mr. Trump his re-election.
A Bad Democratic Bet In The Gop Primaries
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In February, 2021, a few weeks after Peter Meijer became one of only ten Republican members of Congress to vote to impeach Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection, he met with some of the people in his district, in western Michigan, for a virtual town hall. One of them said that she was very disappointed by his vote. Why, she asked him, arent you doing what your constituents want you to do?
That question weighed on me, Meijer replied. Hed known that many of the Trump-supporting voters whod just sent him to Congressit was his first termwould believe that hed betrayed them. Thinking about their reaction made him heartsick. But what he asked himself, he said, was, How do I balance that immediate feeling with what we need to do as a country, what I feel my party needs to do, and where I hope we can go?
Voters may tire of it, tooanother risk for Democrats. If, when surveying the strange shape of the G.O.P. field, with its collection of the extreme, the improbable, and the outlandish, Democrats sound gleeful rather than dismayed or alarmed, voters faith in their seriousness could be diminished. They could come across as hypocrites and fakes, at a time when voters say they are looking for authenticity. And they could sound like part of a party that doesnt have faith in its ability to win an election on the strength of its own policies and ideals.
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To Beat Trump Would Require A Candidate Who Could Unite A Coalition Of Never
Former President Donald Trump remains the favored candidate to win the Republican nomination in 2024 should he run, and hes confident its his if he wants it.
If I do run, I think that Ill do extremely well, Trump told Yahoo Finance in an interview earlier this month. Im not only looking at polls, Im looking at the enthusiasm.
Trump has come out ahead in recent polls of potential 2024 contenders, including a Politico-Morning Consult poll released Oct. 13 that found 47% of Republican voters would vote for Trump if the primary was held today. That put Trump far ahead of his nearest competitors, former Vice President Mike Pence, at 13%, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, at 12%. Trump said hes not concerned about any potential challengers.
I think most people would drop out, I think would drop out, and if I faced him Id beat him like Id beat everyone else, frankly, Trump said.
Some polls this year have found a significant segment of Republican voters want someone else as their nominee in 2024, though. A poll earlier this year by Trumps 2020 pollster Fabrizio and Lee found about half of all Republicans would prefer a different nominee, while a Pew Research survey released earlier this month found 52% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents want someone new.
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Political polls offer one answer. Most show the various candidates beating Mr Trump by wide enough margins nationally that they would be favoured to win an electoral-college majority. But the election is a long way away, and these polls may not be good at identifying who will actually vote, making them unreliable as measures of candidates strength.
Political-betting markets offer another answer to the electability question. Using data from the past 14 months of trading on PredictIt.com, a stockmarket of sorts for betting on political outcomes, The Economist built a statistical model to figure out which candidate has the best chance against Mr Trump. Contenders are weaker if an increase in their odds of winning the nomination corresponds to a boost in the odds of the presidents re-election and stronger if the probability of their victory dents the presidents. After controlling for various factorssuch as the chance that Mr Trump does not finish his first term in office, his approval ratings, the value of the S& P 500 and the recent outbreak of covid-19our model highlights a clear difference among the candidates.
If Bernie Sanders wins the nomination, Mr Trump is likely to be re-elected, with a probability of 58%. But if the president is up against Joe Biden or Mike Bloomberg, he is likely to lose the probability of his victory drops to 46% and 49% respectively.
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