Fifty percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents think the party has “a better chance of winning the presidency in 2024” if former President Donald Trump is the party’s nominee, according to a poll released earlier this week.
The NPR/PBS NewsHour/ Marist National Poll, which was conducted before the Virginia election on Tuesday, found that 35% of respondents want someone other than Trump, while 14% said they didn’t know.
Meanwhile, more than 40% of Democrats think the party might just have a better chance to win the White House in 2024 if President Joe Biden isn’t on the ballot, said the poll.
Forty-four percent of Democrats and independents said they lean Democratic prefer another candidate to run, while 36% said they want Biden to run again. Twenty percent weren’t sure.
The poll also found that just 44% of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing, while 49% disapprove.
Biden said in Rome on Sunday that he’s not concerned about his flagging numbers. “[By] the way, look, the polls are going to go up and down, and up and down. They were higher early. Then they got medium. Then back up and now they’re low,” he told reporters.
“[Look] at every other president. The same thing has happened, but that’s not why I ran. I didn’t run to determine how well I’m going to do in the polls,” he said.
The survey also found that Americans are losing faith in the electoral process.
“A majority of Americans (62%) say they will trust the results of the 2024 election even if the candidate they support loses, which includes 82% of Democrats but only one third of Republicans (33%),” the poll found. “More than eight in ten (81%) Americans believe there is a ‘serious threat’ to our democracy including 89% of Republicans, 80% of independents, and 79% of Democrats. But when asked which party presents the bigger threat, there’s a split: 42% say Democrats, 41% say Republicans, and 8% say both.”
Other findings include:
- Overall, a majority of Americans (58%) have a “great deal” or “good amount” of trust that elections are fair but nearly four in ten (39%) do not believe this.
- There’s a stark partisan divide on the question of trust in elections. 86% of Democrats and 60% of independents have a “great deal” or “good amount” of trust that elections are fair. Just 34% of Republicans agree.
- When it comes to the integrity of local and state election officials in 2022, 70% of Americans are “very confident” or “confident” that they will be fair in their oversight. This includes 91% of Democrats, 67% of independents, and 60% of Republicans.
- Asked if they would trust the outcome of the 2022 Congressional elections if their candidate did NOT win, 71% said they would. This includes 88% of Democrats, 77% of independents, and 53% of Republicans.
- While a majority of Americans (62%) believe Donald Trump continues to falsely say the 2020 election was rigged because he “doesn’t like the outcome,” fully 75% of Republicans say Trump has a legitimate claim that there were “real cases of fraud that changed the results.”
“Americans agree that our democracy is threatened but strongly split along party lines as to the causes,” said Lee M. Miringoff, Director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “When looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election, it is remarkable that a bedrock principle of democracy – that losing candidates and their supporters accept the results – is not held by nearly two in three Republicans who say they will question the results if their candidate does not win.”