July 3 :
After last week's debate with Republican Donald Trump, one-third of Democrats think U.S. President Joe Biden should drop his reelection campaign. However, no prominent elected Democrat performs better than Biden in a hypothetical matchup with Trump, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on July 2.
Biden appears to have maintained his support from registered voters since the debate, as the two-day poll revealed that both Trump (78%) and Biden (81%) continue to have 40% of the vote. Voting begins on November 5.
Out of all the prominent Democrats named, only Michelle Obama—wife of former Democratic President Barack Obama—performed better than Biden and took the lead from Trump in a hypothetical battle, with a margin of 50 percent to 39 percent. Michelle Obama has stated time and time again that she has no intention of running for president. Her memoir, "Becoming," was a best-seller in 2018.
After a debate in which Biden stutter-talked his way through and did not aggressively counter Trump's assaults—which included multiple incorrect assertions—some 32% of Democrats in the survey said he should abandon his reelection campaign.
Even though the criminal investigations into Trump's efforts to reverse his 2020 loss have stalled, he yet confronts his own political liabilities. Both candidates are riding high on the support of their respective party bases in this tight race.
For a long time, Democratic voters were skeptical about Biden's campaign. While the party's primary race was underway in January, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 49% of Democrats thought he shouldn't run for office again in 2024.
No matter what happens, Biden is committed to staying in the race. However, the poll indicates that in hypothetical contests against Trump, the Democrats whose names have surfaced as potential alternatives for him do neither better nor worse than Biden.
For instance, Vice President Kamala Harris was within the poll's 3.5 percentage point margin of error; she trailed Trump by one percentage point, 42% to 43%, which made her showing statistically equivalent to Biden's.
In the past few months, Harris has emerged from Biden's shadow to become an influential figure in the Obama administration advocating for abortion rights. According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, 81% of Democratic voters had a positive impression of Harris, while 78% had a positive impression of Biden. In contrast, 59% of Democrats, mirroring a January poll's findings, felt that Biden's age of 81 was too advanced for him to serve in government.
Performing somewhat worse, trailing behind Trump by 39 percent to 42 percent, was California Governor Gavin Newsom, a burgeoning star in the Democratic Party whom many observers anticipate could run for president in a subsequent election.
When pitted against Trump in a head-to-head fight, not a single elected Democrat has officially announced their candidacy. One thousand seventy adults across the United States were polled in the online survey.
