People are already going crazy about the 2024 presidential race even though it’s still some time away and a lot of things can happen in the meantime.
But a poll of New York voters shows just how much trouble Joe Biden is in with his party in that blue state. Some Democrats are getting it and they don’t think Joe is the right guy to put back in office.
A new Siena College poll found that more than half the Democrats in the state don’t want Biden and think someone else should be nominated. 51 percent of Democrats want a “different candidate,” while 43 percent think he should be nominated. That’s not exactly a reassuring thing for Biden and the Democrats in terms of him running again. Biden still has not formally declared and this can’t help.
Even in the most liberal area of New York — New York City — only a slight majority (52 percent) of Democrats want Biden. However, what’s killing him is that 60 percent of suburban Democrats and 57 percent of upstate Democrats want someone else.
But the problem is that the Democrats’ bench is horrible when they’re casting around for that “someone else.” Folks like Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg don’t inspire confidence. Their failure at their jobs has only dropped their stock to the public. So while the Democrats want someone else, a whopping 63 percent of those who want someone else said they didn’t know or had no opinion about who should pick up the torch in the wake of Biden.
When given a choice to pick from, however, they picked Buttigieg (five percent), Harris (three percent), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) (three percent), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) (three percent), Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (two percent), and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (one percent). 20 percent said that they wanted “someone else” other than these characters.
When you step beyond the Democrats on the opinion about Biden, “a strong majority of independents and an overwhelming majority of Republicans view him unfavorably and disapprove of the job he’s doing,” Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg said. That’s also not a good sign for Biden.
If Biden is in trouble in New York, you know that the powers behind the scene have to be scrambling about what to do.
When you look at the Republicans, it’s Donald Trump leading by a lot with 52 percent saying they would vote for Trump, 27 percent for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and 18 percent wanting another candidate. DeSantis has not yet formally declared that he would be running, but it’s pretty clear that he intends to run.
Of the folks who want another candidate, 20 percent would pick Nikki Haley and six percent would go for former Rep. Liz Cheney. What are those Cheney folks thinking? Granted, that’s six percent of the 20 percent, so it’s not exactly a huge number there. But most of the people who wanted someone else didn’t know who they wanted or had no opinion.
Trump is beating DeSantis with self-described conservative Republicans by 24 points (54-30 percent), as well as with suburban Republicans (52-23 percent) and upstate Republicans (52-31 percent). He’s also up by 29 points in New York City, 49-20 percent.
This tracks with a Monmouth poll that showed that Trump was up by 14 points over DeSantis, which showed that Trump had been gaining ground since January.