After a heated midterm election, widely considered both a referendum on President Biden and a test for former President Trump’s 2024 candidacy, the latest Fox News Poll finds little support for a 2020 rematch in the next presidential election.
The survey of registered voters, released Thursday, finds almost two-thirds (64%) do not want President Biden to run for office again in 2024, while a third say they do (33%).
That’s an improvement for Biden since July, when just 27% said they wanted him to run again and 71% did not.
The small bounce-back in support can be attributed to the president shoring up his Democratic base: just 51% of Democrats said yes to another run 5 months ago, while 63% give the go ahead today. Independents are also slightly more positive towards another Biden run: 14% said yes in July vs. 22% today. Eighty-seven percent of Republicans are against another Biden run.
Trump announced his 2024 White House bid on November 16, and he does slightly better than Biden among voters overall when it comes to entering the 2024 race: 39% say they are happy Trump is running again while 6-in-10 are not enthused (58%).
Sixty-six percent of Republicans are glad he’s running again, relatively unchanged from July when they were asked if they wanted him to run again (67% said yes). Meanwhile, majorities of Democrats (82%) and independents (66%) are unhappy with the announcement.
When it comes to both presidents’ popularity, it’s not pretty: Biden is underwater by 13 points (43% favorable vs. 56% unfavorable) while Trump is under by 15 (42-57%).
A concern for Trump heading into 2024 is his Republican base: just 77% of Republicans have a favorable opinion of him (22% unfavorable). In December 2020, 86% of Republicans viewed Trump favorably.
Biden enjoys 85% popularity among Democrats (15% unfavorable).
‘Biden has shored up his base and the 2024 Democratic nomination now appears to be his for the taking,’ says Democratic pollster Chris Anderson who conducts the Fox News Poll with Republican pollster Daron Shaw. ‘On the other side, Trump’s grip on his base may be slacking and providing room for other Republican contenders to get a foothold against him.’
Other potential 2024 candidates do not fare any better, with the exception of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Both Vice President Kamala Harris (-16) and former Vice President Mike Pence (-9) are in the negative with voters.
DeSantis is the only individual tested with a positive rating, albeit by just 2 percentage points (39% have a favorable opinion of the Sunshine State governor vs. 37% unfavorable). Still, a quarter (24%) of voters can’t rate him, including 16% of Republicans.
Poll-pourri
Where do voters stand on the parties following a heated midterm election?
We asked voters to rate the parties on a 0-100 scale, where zero means they feel as cold and negative as possible and 100 means as warm and positive as possible, with 50 serving as a neutral mid-point, indicating neither positive nor negative feeling.
Overall, the parties are viewed fairly equally: each receives an average score of 45 on the 0-100 scale. The Democratic party gets a warm rating of 36% (51-100 on the scale) and a cold one of 45% (0-49 on the scale). For the Republican party, it is 36% warm to 44% cold.
Republicans give their party an average rating of 69, while they rate the Democratic Party at 20 (a 49-point difference). Meanwhile, Democrats rate their party at 74, but rate the Republican Party at 25 (a 49-point difference). Independents rate the Republican Party at 37 and the Democratic Party at 41.
‘Beneath the surface, the thermometer scores show the deep partisan divide that animates American politics these days. After a long and contentious midterm campaign, voters aren’t loving either party right now,’ says Shaw. ‘The poll also shows the deep emotional rift between Republicans and Democrats towards the other side. The technical term is ‘affective polarization’ and we see it here in spades.’
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Conducted December 9-12, 2022, under the joint direction of Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R), this Fox News Poll includes interviews with 1,005 registered voters nationwide who were randomly selected from a national voter file and spoke with live interviewers on both landlines and cellphones. The total sample has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
