Former President Trump leads President Biden and Vice President Harris in hypothetical 2024 match-ups, according to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released Friday exclusively to The Hill.
Forty-six percent of those surveyed said they would vote for Trump over Biden if the 2024 election were held today, compared to 41 percent who said they would support the president. Thirteen percent were unsure or didn’t know.
By a wider margin, 49 percent of respondents would vote for Trump and 39 percent would vote for Harris if the 2024 race were between the two. Thirteen percent were unsure or didn’t know.
Trump continues to be the strong favorite among a competitive Republican field, according to the poll. In a hypothetical eight-way primary, 37 percent of respondents would vote for Trump, while 19 percent would back Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), whose support has dropped from previous polls.
Seven percent would vote for former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, the second notable Republican to officially launch a presidential bid and first to challenge Trump. The poll found that Haley did gain some momentum after what many considered to be a successful presidential campaign announcement this week, rising to third place in a potential GOP primary that does not feature Trump.
A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey in January found Haley with just 3 percent support in a hypothetical primary.
While the Republican presidential primary is expected to be crowded, Democrats are coalescing around a Biden reelection campaign, with intraparty talks about replacing the president in 2024 cooling down.
After Biden’s State of the Union address, his approval rating remains unchanged at 42 percent, where it has hovered for most of his presidency. The president did receive some high marks for taking on Republicans who heckled him during his address and over Social Security and Medicare, but voters were split 50-50 on whether they found the speech favorable, the poll found.
The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey was conducted Feb. 15-16 and surveyed 1,838 registered voters. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll.
The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.