Majorities of American voters do not want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to run in the next presidential election in 2024, according to a new poll.
More than 60% of voters and 30% of Democrats in the NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ poll said Biden should not run again. Among all voters, 57% said Trump should not run again. Among Republicans, that total was 26%.
But most of those polled do not know who they would like to run instead, either. The vice-president, Kamala Harris, and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, were the leading named contenders.
Biden, 79 and the oldest president ever inaugurated, has said he intends to run for a second term.
“I’m a great respecter of fate,” he said in December. “Fate has intervened in my life many, many times. If I’m in the health I’m in now, if I’m in good health, then in fact I would run again.”
His first term has been beset by crises, from the withdrawal from Afghanistan to the Russian war in Ukraine, and from the coronavirus pandemic to strong economic headwinds at home.
The Republican assault on US elections and voting rights, led by Trump, has also played out during Biden’s time in the White House.
Trump has suggested he will soon announce a third presidential run, possibly as a way of avoiding potential criminal charges over his election subversion efforts and the deadly Capitol attack.
Respondents in the poll were asked who they would prefer as the Democratic candidate if Biden did not run.
“Someone else” attracted 44.2% support but among named alternatives the vice-president, Kamala Harris, led with 16.1%.
Next came Bernie Sanders, the 80-year-old socialist senator from Vermont who ran for the nomination in 2016 and 2020, with 10.7%; Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, with 8.9%; and Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation, who also ran in 2020, with 7.8%.
The New York progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and the governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, were also mentioned by smaller numbers of voters.
On the Republican side of the ledger, “Someone else” also led, with 38.1% of the vote. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, attracted 23.4% support and Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, received 20.5%.
Also attracting support were the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley; the Texas senator Ted Cruz; the Texas governor, Greg Abbott; the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem; and the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton.