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New Poll Shows Democrats Prefer Someone Other Than Biden In 2024

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Joe Biden has gotten some news about his chances to win the presidency again in 2024 and it is likely not what he wanted to hear.

A new poll conducted by Marist said that Democrats want someone else to head the ticket in the next presidential election.

The poll showed that 44 percent of respondents believe that someone other than Biden would have the best chance to win in the 2024 election versus 36 percent who believed Biden had the best chance and 20 percent said they were not certain.

For Republicans 50 percent believe that Donald Trump has the best chance of winning in 2024, 35 percent said they would prefer another nominee and 14 percent were not certain.

“It’s difficult to find an analog for a political party saying, preemptively, that it would prefer to replace a president with a new nominee in the following election. In 2010, shortly before Democrats lost big in the election that year, Gallup gave Democrats a choice in a rematch between incumbent Obama and Hillary Clinton as their 2012 nominee. They still picked Obama 52 percent to 37 percent,” The Washington Post said of the poll.

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Business Insider reported.

Similar to other components of the Biden presidency — such as inflation and messy foreign affairs — the closest historical parallel lies in the Carter administration. 

Former President Jimmy Carter saw similar lackluster support in a New York Times/CBS poll, with just 23% of Democrats saying they’d back him in a primary challenge for reelection. Carter ultimately prevailed over the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts in the 1984 Democratic primary, but eventually lost to former President Ronald Reagan.

As Insider’s Robin Bravender recently reported, allies of Vice President Kamala Harris are fretting over a hypothetical scenario in which Biden bows out of running in 2024 and she ends up getting a primary challenge from Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, and her 2020 primary foe.

With a full year left before the 2022 midterms, polls like the NBC/Marist one are less consequential for decision-makers in office and on the campaign side.

Even more concerning for the administration is that a recent poll shows Vice President Kamala Harris is not too popular.

A project from The Los Angeles Times that tracks opinion polls from around the nation showed that she is less popular than President Biden and many of her own predecessors.

“As of Oct. 26, 42% of registered voters had a favorable opinion of Harris and 51% had an unfavorable opinion — a net rating of -9 percentage points, according to a Times average,” The Times said.

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Since taking office, Harris has been assigned one of the administration’s thorniest issues: stemming the influx of immigrants attempting to cross U.S. borders. Republicans have sought to make her the face of an issue that they believe could help them politically.

After taking on that role, Harris’ approval ratings began to decline, with unfavorable opinions surpassing favorable ones in June. Whether the decline is directly related to the immigration debate is uncertain, however, as the dip in her approval also corresponds to a small decline in President Biden’s job approval.

The dip followed an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, where Harris bristled at a question about why she had not visited the border, triggering criticism. Comments about immigration and the United States’ southern border during visits to Mexico and Guatemala have also sparked controversy.

But what is even more telling is that Harris is far less popular than many of the vice presidents that came before her.

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It shows her slightly below Mike Pence and Biden at close to the same point in their tenure but far below Dick Cheney and Al Gore.

In typical fashion, the Times does its best to insinuate that the reason she is not popular, in part, is because of sexism.

“As Harris’ stature has increased, so has the volume of sexist, violent and misogynistic attacks against her on social media, with researchers finding hundreds of thousands of examples,” it said.

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