Poll: Just 1 in 4 Americans want Biden or Trump to run again in 2024
Eager for a change after years of conflict and upheaval, most Americans do not want either Donald Trump or Joe Biden to run for president again in 2024, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.
The survey of 1,558 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Dec. 9 to 13, found that just 22 percent want Biden to launch another White House bid. A mere 27 percent want Trump to try for a second term. Nearly six in 10 — an unusually robust consensus at a time of deep political divisions — say they’re opposed to a Trump campaign (59 percent) or a Biden campaign (57 percent) in 2024. The rest — 14 percent in Trump’s case, 22 percent in Biden’s — say they’re not sure.
These results are particularly striking because they reveal relatively high levels of apathy across the political spectrum toward both men, who remain their respective parties’ likeliest 2024 nominees.
Both, for instance, find even less enthusiasm for their nascent reelection efforts among independents — the voters most inclined to swing from candidate to candidate — than among Americans as a whole. Just 14 percent of independents want Biden to run again; only 23 percent want Trump to.
Trump’s support among Republicans is stronger than Biden’s among Democrats, but it’s hardly universal. Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of those who voted for Trump in 2020 don’t even want to see him on the ballot again in 2024.
It’s the sitting president, however, who is struggling the most with his own voters — which is no surprise given that he remains the center of attention while America continues to face new COVID variants, inflation and rising violent crime.
Overall, just 41 percent of Americans now approve of how Biden is handling his job; 53 percent disapprove. That’s Biden’s poorest rating in any Yahoo News/YouGov survey to date.
Perhaps as a result, just 38 percent of 2020 Biden voters say they want him to run for reelection. A full 30 percent say he should step aside. Those numbers are a little more favorable among Democrats as a whole: 43 percent and 28 percent, respectively. But they’re still fairly soft.
To be sure, nearly all Democrats say they would vote for Biden if he ran again. When offered a choice between Biden and Trump, registered voters chose Biden by a 6-point margin: 47 percent to 41 percent. That’s slightly higher than Biden’s 4-point advantage on Yahoo News/YouGov surveys conducted in late October and early November. A full 90 percent of registered Democratic voters would cast their ballots for Biden in such a scenario — even more than the share of registered Republican voters who would vote for Trump (84 percent).
Yet the desire for an alternative — especially among Democrats — resurfaces when voters are allowed a third choice: “Someone else.” Here, a full 21 percent of registered voters opt for this other unnamed candidate, with Biden shedding about twice as much support (13 percentage points) as Trump (6 percentage points).
This pattern persists when voters are asked about hypothetical matchups for each party’s 2024 presidential nomination. Pro-Trump sentiment among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents is by no means unanimous: Only about half (53 percent) prefer him as the nominee, while nearly a third (30 percent) favor “someone else.”
And when matched against possible opponents, Trump’s support falls even further (to 44 percent). Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, now earns nearly a quarter of the GOP primary vote (23 percent), up from 13 percent in August. Back then, Trump was in a far more commanding position, with 58 percent support.
Yet again, Biden looks even weaker.
Just one month ago, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were about evenly divided over whether they preferred Biden (38 percent) or someone else (41 percent) as the party’s 2024 nominee. Now fewer say Biden (32 percent), and more say they’re not sure (27 percent, up from 21 percent previously).
Biden’s backing then plummets again (to just 20 percent) when he’s matched against a hypothetical field of potential Democratic alternatives, with double-digit support for Kamala Harris (13 percent), Elizabeth Warren (11 percent), Bernie Sanders (10 percent) and Pete Buttigieg (10 percent).
Meanwhile, nearly a quarter (24 percent) say they’re not sure whom they prefer for the 2024 nomination.
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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,558 U.S. adults interviewed online from Dec. 9 to 13. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as well as 2020 presidential vote (or non-vote) and voter registration status. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.7 percent.
