New polling indicates former President Donald Trump will have an incredibly difficult time courting voters in the 2024 presidential election, as nearly two-thirds of Americans say that, if he’s the Republican nominee, they probably won’t vote for him.
According to an Associated Press/NORC poll published earlier this week, Trump has disastrous favorability ratings among voters, with just 35 percent of Americans saying they view him “very” or “somewhat” favorably, while 62 percent say they view him “very or “somewhat” unfavorably.
When voters were asked whether they’d support either leading candidate for either of the two major parties, both Trump and President Joe Biden fared poorly in the survey. Yet Trump did far worse on the question than Biden did.
While 54 percent said they wouldn’t likely support Biden if he is nominated again as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, a whopping 63 percent of Americans said they definitely or probably wouldn’t vote for Trump. Forty-five percent of voters said they would support Biden if he’s renominated, but only 36 percent said the same about Trump.
The numbers showcase the difficult position that Trump is in, a little more than one year out from the general election, as a challenger to an incumbent president.
While he’ll face difficult odds if he’s pitted, once again, against Biden in the general election, Trump will likely cruise to victory in the Republican primaries, as the poll shows voters in that party still back him — 7 in 10 Republican-leaning voters view him favorably, and 6 in 10 say they still want him to run for president again, the poll found.
Other polls for the Republican primaries show Trump is well ahead of his competitors. According to an aggregate of polling data collected by RealClearPolitics, Trump garners 54.7 percent of support from GOP voters. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is the next-closest to Trump in terms of popularity, only receives around 14.8 percent, on average, according to the polling data compiled.
Trump’s popularity among Republicans doesn’t seem to be affected by the four indictments he has received over the past five months. But separate polling data, from a Reuters/Ipsos survey published earlier this month, showed that support from Republican-leaning voters would drop significantly if Trump were convicted of a crime.
A plurality of GOP-aligned voters, 45 percent, said they wouldn’t vote for him if he was found guilty in a court of law, that poll found. If Trump is in prison by the time the 2024 election rolls around, 52 percent of Republican voters said they wouldn’t vote for him.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.