Most Americans Don’t Want Biden or Trump – Today, when it comes to politics, there are few things that the majority of Americans can agree upon – but according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, most U.S. voters are entirely unenthused by the prospect of a rematch between President Joe Biden and his predecessor former President Donald Trump.
About two-thirds of respondents overall, who offered their opinions before Biden officially announced he would seek reelection, said they didn’t want to see either man run again in 2024.
Currently, just 41% of poll respondents, including 74% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans, said they approved of Biden’s performance as president. Biden continues to be dogged by high inflation, and low approval numbers. Biden faces the challenge of sparking enthusiasm among Democrats in a match-up between the two.
Among Democrats, 44% of registered voters said Biden shouldn’t seek reelection, with his age being a top issue. By contrast, 34% of Republicans said Trump should not run again.
Trump Still Popular – But Popular Enough?
Trump currently remains the front-runner among Republicans, and last month actually saw his lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. In a Quinnipiac University poll, 46% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said they would vote for Trump compared to 32% who said they’d support DeSantis in the primaries.
There are a few things to consider, of course, namely that Trump could still head to jail rather than the Oval Office next year – and as Vanity Fair recently reported, should Trump be found guilty of all 35 class E felonies that he is facing, he could face an incredibly yuge number of years in jail, 136 in total!
That wouldn’t entirely derail his campaign. Trump could follow socialist firebrand Eugene V. Debs, who Politico.com noted received nearly a million votes (3% of the popular vote) while behind bars in the 1920 election. Given Trump’s popularity with the MAGA crowd, it is almost certain he’d get as many votes.
Should a long shot happen, and Trump was to win while in prison, legal scholars suggested the need for a duly elected president to fulfill the duties of the office would override a criminal conviction. The sentence would at the very least be put on hold, while Trump could even pardon himself – a strategy Debs had said he’d employ.
But first, Trump needs to get through his legal battles and the primaries.
Biden Goes For the Double
Though even many Democrats think Biden is too old to seek reelection – as he would be 86 years old at the end of his second term – the sitting president maintains an edge over his likely rival. The Reuters/Ipsos poll also found that in a hypothetical one-on-one match-up, Biden currently leads Trump 43% to 38% among registered voters, just outside the poll’s 4 percentage point margin of error.
Even worse for Trump is the fact that Biden leads among independent voters.
Biden appears to use a message similar to his February State of the Union address in which he said, “Let’s finish this job.” Instead of a live event, the 80-year-old commander-in-chief announced his re-election campaign in a three-minute video, and comes on the four-year anniversary of when Biden declared his run, promising to heal the “soul of the nation.”
That goal has largely remained elusive and the country is arguably even more divided than it was four years ago.
“I said we are in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are,” Biden said in the video. “The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer.”
Biden’s campaign is also directed at what he labeled MAGA extremists – and it is clear that Biden won’t be running as a unifier but as someone who simply wants a second term.
Yet, barring health issues, Biden should easily secure the nomination. His only challenger is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late U.S. Senator and nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy. It was last week that Kennedy, who has never held public office but who has been noted for his Covid-19 conspiracy theories, announced his run for the Democratic nomination.
Few in the media actually paid much to Kennedy’s announcement, as it didn’t even make the evening broadcast news – and the Biden campaign gave it little notice. Even members of the Kennedy “dynasty” have said they’d not throw their support to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – arguing his anti-vaccine views are “unfounded” and “dangerous.”
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Author Experience and Expertise
A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
