Biden Is More Vulnerable in the 2024 Primary than Trump in 2020

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The first two national polls of the declared 2024 Democratic presidential primary contest came out on Thursday, and they have already revealed an incumbent more vulnerable to intraparty challenge than Donald Trump in 201920.

Environmental/vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., no doubt benefiting from unusually high name recognition, polled 21 percent in an Emerson College survey and 19 percent in a Fox poll News both numbers are higher than any Trump challenger received at any time during the last presidential cycle. The results for spiritual guru and 2020 primary also-ran Marianne Williamson were also eye-opening: 8 percent and 9 percent, respectively, after never once polling higher than 2 percent in her first running.

The Emerson survey, which did not offer respondents the options of “other,” “not sure,” or “none of the above,” had Biden at 70 percent. Fox did include those categories (they received a combined 11 percent), and the president’s support dropped to 62 percent. The lowest poll number Trump has registered against a declared primary opponent in 2020 is 73 percent.

Biden’s average of 66 percent compared to a combined 29 percent for his challengers does not favor Trump’s average of 84 percent compared to a combined 7 percent for former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh, and former South Carolina Governor/congressman Mark Sanford, in the 2019 poll that includes three.

The Kennedy/Williamson comparative strength is all the more remarkable considering that, unlike the group Trump derided as “the three stooges,” neither held public office, let alone served as popular official throughout the state. Both also belong to the unorthodox side of the Democratic spectrum, a lane that never garnered much interest in the party’s 2020 primary, as voters focused on finding the most marketable candidate to unseat Donald Trump. Williamson, tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and the late former Sen. Mike Gravel never combined for more than 4 percent in the polls in any given month last season.

So what accounts for the comparative popularity of iconoclasts in 2023? For one, it’s clear that Biden doesn’t have the same hold on Democratic voters that Trump as president did on Republicans. In 201920, Trump’s approval rating among GOP voters, as measured by Gallup, rested between 87 percent and 95 percent. Biden, whose most recent overall approval rating was at a personal low of 37 percent, over the past 12 months has seen Democratic approval drop nearly 10 points, between 78 percent and 87 percent.

Multiple polls at the start of the primary season have shown multiple and sometimes even majorities of Democrats saying they wish Biden would not run for re-election, even as home-team support for his candidacy has begun increased recently. As The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake noted last week, the incumbent is “someone who only about half of Democrats want to run, half say he’s too old to serve, and only about 4 in 10 approve very much. Only 1 in 5 say they would be enthusiastic about her winning.” Biden’s newly announced campaign, according to Blake, “has no comparison in modern American political history. We’ve never seen so few members of a president’s party want him re-elected.”

The reasons for Biden’s soft support seem clear enough: Americans are deeply pessimistic about the economy; nearly three-quarters think the country is headed in the wrong direction. It’s been a bad past three years. And the man who runs the federal government isn’t getting any younger. If Republicans can somehow avoid doing the stupid thing of changing the nomination to a proven presidential loser, and if Trump manages to resist sabotage of whoever gets the GOP nod, then a major advantage of Biden proved he could beat the 45th president evaporated overnight.

It is possible that Democratic voters, after engaging in a brief bout with political competitors, however odd, will rally back to the former incumbent. Right now, most of the party’s key figures, led by power-hungry California Gov. Gavin Newsom, are good soldiers. But if the anti-establishment fringes continue to attract nearly one-third of Democratic polling support, or even increase, keep an eye out for three potential responses: 1) The Biden campaign is strong-arming what appears to be neutral party institutions; 2) the media is launching an all-out attack on RFK Jr.’s (very attackable) record, and 3) the more ambitious of the establishment is beginning to quietly retreat to the sidelines.

Through both voter apathy and Trump/Republican National Committee chicanery, the 2020 GOP primary is a sham. Democrats, love them or hate them, seem more interested in a real life contest. bend

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