If the 2024 presidential election were held today, former President Donald Trump would defeat President Joe Biden by a margin of 46 to 41, according to a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll released to The Hill on Friday. Thirteen percent of respondents said they were unsure.
In a match up with Vice President Kamala Harris, 49 percent of those surveyed would support Trump vs. 39 percent for Harris.
The former president still leads the field of GOP primary candidates with 37 percent support, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with 19 percent and former South Carolina Gov. and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley with seven percent. The Hill notes that support for DeSantis has declined from earlier polls.
According to the report, support for Haley has increased from three percent in the Harvard-Harris January poll, a sign that she may have gained some momentum since declaring her candidacy last week.
The poll also showed that Biden’s approval numbers remained unchanged at 42 percent following his Feb. 7 State of the Union address.
This survey of 1,838 registered voters was conducted Feb. 15-16.
Poll shows Trump leads both Biden and Harris in separate general-election polls for 2024 https://t.co/shHQNTVCWD
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) February 18, 2023
This poll comes as good news for the former president who has trailed Biden in recent polls. The RealClearPolitics average of polls in a potential head-to-head matchup between the two shows a virtual tie with Trump ahead by 0.1 percent as of Saturday at 4 p.m.
A Quinnipiac poll released on Thursday showed Biden up by two points and a Public Policy Polling survey showed Biden up by four.
Both candidates have negative favorability numbers. The RealClearPolitics average favorability ratings show that Biden is underwater by 11.3 percent and Trump by a whopping 18.2 percent.
It’s so early in the campaign cycle and polling has been so inaccurate in both directions in recent cycles that any poll should be taken with a grain of salt.
That said, an overwhelming number of polls show that the majority of Democrats hope that Biden does not run for reelection because of his age.
NPR spoke with Republican strategist Sarah Longwell who has been interviewing focus groups of people who voted for Trump in 2016 and switched to Biden in 2020.
She told NPR, “They’re pro-Biden, they like Biden. And in our most recent focus group, they liked [Biden’s] State of the Union.”
But, in her last panel, six of the nine voters hoped he would bow out of the race. One participant said, “I hate to say it and sound like an ageist — his age is getting really up there. Do we want to elect a president and have him die in office?”
Other panelists firmly agreed. His age is an issue.
A number of recent polls have shown similar results. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released a poll earlier this month which found 37% of Democrats want Biden to run for reelection. That number had dropped 15 points from the same poll taken ahead of the midterm elections.
Longwell said, “Immediately when they start thinking about 2024, the first place they go is his age. They are simply worried he is too old for another term.”
“I’ve had a lot of people say things like, ‘Well, he’s going to be closer to 90 by the end of his second term than 80,'” she noted.
However, when she asked the group who they would vote for in a rematch between Biden and Trump, there was unanimous support for Biden.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. The former president is only four years younger than Biden. He presided over a robust economy, our border was the most secure it had ever been, and he projected strength in the world. And, unlike Biden whose every public appearance is marked by a gaffe, Trump is sharp as a tack.
Why these former Trump supporters would rather vote for a senile man who has wrecked the country is inexplicable.
Although conservatives have been speaking openly about Biden’s cognitive decline since he launched his campaign in 2019, Democrats rarely, if ever, acknowledge it’s an issue. Their concern about his age is the closest they will come. I suppose if they were to admit it, they would be asked why he’s still in office and why they would even consider nominating him in 2024.
Biden has been on a steady downhill trajectory since he declared his candidacy. The decline from one year to the next is unmistakable. It’s becoming more and more difficult for his handlers to prop him up.
But they managed to carry him over the finish line in 2020 and they did the same for Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman in November. Can they repeat the magic?
A previous version of this article appeared in The Western Journal.
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Well, in any fantasy story, there is usually a hero or heroine, and a villain. In this case Trump may be some kind of hero, but the villain remains all those laws that allow elections to be stolen. I doubt it matters who runs for president until that ingredient is left out of the cake.
Not to be cynical about Nikki Haley, but how many times has the left promoted one of our underdogs instead of the favorite? They will promote Haley until they can’t.
I don’t believe we will see another Republican in the White House, until we correct our election laws, no matter how news looks, at a glance. We may lose the House majority in Congress, next year, because the left has probably perfected their fraud and geared it toward every election.
Sadly, I think you’re spot on.
I wish I was wrong.
DJT and I are the same age. (He’s one month older.) The GOP elephants with the longest tusks won’t welcome him back. He punched out too many sacred elephants, most justifiably.
The Lindsey Graham’s, Mittens Romney’s, Chinless McConnel’s and Bushes won’t support him. About half the key people he appointed to key positions turned out to be…counterproductive. Note how many wrote tell-all books after leaving the circus.
It’s time he be a King Maker, and not strive to be The King again.