Biden, Trump both lose support with 2 independent presidential candidates in 2024 matchup

From left to right: Independent presidential candidate Cornel West, former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Photo: Getty Images

A new national poll suggests that independent presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornell West pull support from both President Biden and former President Donald Trump — the two likely major party nominees — in a hypothetical four-way 2024 general election showdown, FOX News informs.

Biden stands at 47% support and Trump at 46% among registered voters in a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday. The findings are unchanged from Quinnipiac's August and September surveys.

"Democrats support Biden 94 percent and Republicans support Trump 94 percent. Independents are split, with 45 percent supporting Trump and 44 percent supporting Biden," the survey's release states.

When Kennedy is added to the mix, Biden stands at 39%, Trump 36% and Kennedy at 22% support.

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and high-profile vaccine critic who is a scion of arguably the nation’s most famous family political dynasty, launched a Democrat primary challenge against Biden in April.

But Kennedy announced at a campaign event in Philadelphia last month that he would seek the White House as an independent candidate.

West, an outspoken progressive university scholar, was running on the Green Party ticket, but last month announced he would seek the presidency as an independent candidate.

When West's name is included, Biden's support drops to 36%, Trump edges down to 35%, with Kennedy at 19% and West grabbing 6% support.

Among independent voters in a four-way matchup, a third support Kennedy, three in ten back Trump, with Biden at 27% and West at 8%.

Ballot access will be a key question for Kennedy and West going forward. Their campaigns will have to gather a long list of signatures in each of the 50 states to land access to the ballot.

The survey also indicates Republicans with the enthusiasm edge. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans say they're more motivated to vote in next year's presidential election than in past White House contests. That percentage drops to 47% for Democrats and 45% for independents.

Trump stands at 64% support in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 15% and former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at 6%.

The survey indicates Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy each at 3%, with everyone else at 1% or less.

The survey was conducted Oct. 26-30.

President Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states one year before the 2024 election, suffering from enormous doubts about his age and deep dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy and a host of other issues, new polls by pro-democrats ‘The New York Times’ and Siena College have found.

The results show Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins of four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden is ahead only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll found.

Discontent pulsates throughout the Times/Siena poll, with a majority of voters saying Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them. The survey also reveals the extent to which the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Mr. Biden is fraying. Demographic groups that backed Mr. Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested, as two-thirds of the electorate sees the country moving in the wrong direction.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are both deeply — and similarly — unpopular, according to the poll. But voters who overwhelmingly said the nation was on the wrong track are taking out their frustrations on the president.

“The world is falling apart under Biden,” said Spencer Weiss, a 53-year-old electrical substation specialist in Bloomsburg, Pa., who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 but is now backing Mr. Trump, albeit with some reservations. “I would much rather see somebody that I feel can be a positive role-model leader for the country. But at least I think Trump has his wits about him.”

…Still, the survey shows how Mr. Biden begins the next year at a deficit even though Mr. Trump has been indicted on criminal charges four times and faces trial in 2024. If the results in the poll were the same next November, Mr. Trump would be poised to win more than 300 Electoral College votes, far above the 270 needed to take the White House.

Another ominous sign for Democrats is that voters across all income levels felt that Mr. Biden’s policies had hurt them personally, while they credited Mr. Trump’s policies for helping them. The results were mirror opposites: Voters gave Mr. Trump a 17-point advantage for having helped them and Mr. Biden an 18-point disadvantage for having hurt them.

For Mr. Biden, who turns 81 later this month, being the oldest president in American history stands out as a glaring liability. An overwhelming 71 percent said he was “too old” to be an effective president — an opinion shared across every demographic and geographic group in the poll, including a remarkable 54 percent of Mr. Biden’s own supporters.

Mr. Biden has survived poor showings in polls before. In fact, in October 2022 in the run-up to the midterm elections, the president’s job approval rating was nearly the same as it is now. His party still managed to lose fewer seats than expected in the House and gained one seat in the Senate, in part by painting Republican candidates as extremists.

Today, the degree to which voters are turned off by Mr. Trump’s personality and bombast — which has been the glue helping keep together a fractious Democratic coalition for years — appears to have waned. Only 46 percent of voters said Mr. Biden had the proper temperament to be president, barely higher than the 43 percent who said the same of Mr. Trump. That said, Mr. Trump will be more in the spotlight in 2024, including his criminal trials, a growing presence that could remind voters why they were repelled by him in the first place.

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