Poll: Only 4 in 10 Democrats Say Biden ‘Strongest’ Candidate the Party Could Nominate

President Joe Biden speaks with members of the media before boarding Marine One on the Sou
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Hannah Knudsen

Just four in ten Democrats believe President Joe Biden, 80, is the “strongest” candidate the Democrat party could nominate for 2024, a recent survey from The Economist/YouGov found.

The survey asked respondents, “Do you think that Joe Biden is the strongest candidate that Democrats could nominate for president in 2024?”

Thirty-nine percent of Democrats identified Biden as the “strongest” candidate the party could pick, while over one-third, 36 percent, said “no, he is not.” Roughly one quarter, 26 percent, said they are “not sure.”

In contrast, a majority, 55 percent, of Republicans identify former President Trump as the Republican Party’s strongest candidate for 2024.

The survey was taken July 8-11, 2023, among 1,500 U.S. adult citizens. It comes as Democrats grow more concerned over the potential of third party candidates taking some of Biden’s voters, should he be the party’s nominee.

Prominent civil rights activist and former Harvard Divinity School philosophy professor Cornel West, for example, jumped into the presidential race last month and has since transitioned as the Green Party candidate “with the goal of giving working people, the poor and struggling Americans across the 50 states a real choice that’s of, by and for the people in the 2024 election,” according to a July 5 press release.

“We can end poverty, endless war, cop cities, mass incarceration and ecological collapse, and provide housing, health care, reproductive rights, reparations, education and thriving wages for all,” West said in the press release.

“People have had enough of organized greed, institutionalized hatred, and normalized indifference to the lives of poor and working people of all colors,” he said, adding, “Yet the bipartisan consensus is siphoning trillions of dollars into wars that bring us to the verge of nuclear holocaust and tax giveaways to billionaires already drenched in obscene profits at the expense of struggling workers.”

Democrat National Committee (DNC) Chairman Jaime Harrison is among those who have issued warnings.

“This is not the time in order to experiment. This is not the time to play around on the margins,” he said, according to the Hill.

“What we see is a lot of folks who want to be relevant and try to be relevant in these elections and not looking at the big picture,” he said. “We got to reelect Joe Biden.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is continuing to toy with the potential of a third party bid, increasing speculation following the news of his upcoming participation in the No Labels “Common Sense” town hall taking place in New Hampshire this month.

RELATED– Manchin: Won’t Say If He’ll Run for President or If He’d Run as a Democrat

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