Trump holds 7-point lead over Biden in new poll
Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden by seven points in a new poll showing the Republican candidate defeating the Democrat incumbent if they go head-to-head in 2024.
The latest Messenger/Harris poll conducted by HarrisX, released on Monday, has Trump with 47% support among those surveyed, versus 40% for Biden and 13% undecided.
Additionally, when respondents were asked to choose between Trump, Biden, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Cornel West, Trump received 40% support, Biden 33%, Kennedy 14% and West 2%.
Although besting Biden in the polling, the report also found that 55% of voters do not want Trump to run again in 2024, with 25% of Republicans and 56% of independents agreeing.
For the current president, however, 67% of respondents do not want Biden to run for reelection in 2024, including 40% of Democrats and 75% of independents.
The poll drew from an online survey conducted Nov. 15-19 among 3,017 registered voters in the United States by HarrisX, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.
The poll also found that, when asked who they would vote for in the Republican primary, Trump led the pack with Republican voters (62%), followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (11%) and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley (10%). Seven percent of Republican respondents said they weren't sure.
When asked who they would vote for if Trump dropped out of the GOP primary, DeSantis was the most favored by Republican respondents with 38%. The second highest result was "don't know/unsure" (19%), followed by Haley (16%) and Vivek Ramaswamy (13%).
Earlier this month, a New York Times/Siena College survey found that Trump led Biden in five of six "swing states": Arizona (49% vs. 44%), Georgia (49% vs. 43%), Michigan (48% vs. 43%), Nevada (52% vs. 41%) and Pennsylvania (48% vs. 44%). For the sixth surveyed swing state, Wisconsin, Biden held a slight lead over Trump of 47% vs. 45%.
In September, The Washington Post and ABC News released a poll that found that 51% of respondents supported Trump, while 42% backed Biden.
The Post published an analysis that dismissed the findings as "probably an outlier," claiming that "Trump's lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat."
"Biden and former president Donald Trump appear headed for a rematch of their 2020 contest, although more than 3 in 5 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they would prefer a nominee other than the president," the September analysis reads.
"Biden's advisers have argued that he is the strongest Democrat for 2024 and those who wish for someone else share no consensus on who that should be, with 8 percent naming Vice President Harris, 8 percent naming Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 20 percent saying they prefer 'just someone else.'"