Biden looks to defy abysmal polling in 2024 reelection bid
Haisten Willis
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If President Joe Biden wins a second term in 2024, it will be in defiance of several polls that show his popularity waning.
Biden announced his reelection bid Tuesday morning and is moving quickly with campaign plans, but the news comes as polls show that a supermajority of voters don’t want him.
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“Every generation has a moment where they have had to stand up for democracy. To stand up for their fundamental freedoms. I believe this is ours,” Biden tweeted. “That’s why I’m running for reelection as President of the United States. Join us. Let’s finish the job.”
Biden will first have to convince voters to let him finish the job, and a series of polls indicate they’re skeptical.
An NBC News poll released one day before the announcement found that just 26% want a second Biden term, compared to 70% who do not. And another poll, released by CBS News the same morning as Biden’s announcement, found that just 22% of even Democratic-leaning voters were excited about the prospect of him running again.
A reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about that during the afternoon briefing.
“We understand what the polls are saying,” Jean-Pierre said. “But I will say this. In 2020, more Americans voted for this president than any other president in history. And let’s not forget, in 2022, against all odds, against everything that we were being told, this president had one of the most successful midterm elections for a Democratic president in 60 years.”
Biden himself has made a similar scoreboard argument in the past, often using the adage: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative.”
But the president’s would-be opponents are making hay of the polling, with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) boasting that 70% of people don’t want Biden to finish the job.
Still, who the Republican alternative proves to be will be crucial next year, argues Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.
“DeSantis or Tim Scott or Nikki Haley, they don’t have nearly as much baggage as [Donald] Trump has,” Bannon said. “And if one of them is the nominee, Biden is going to have to magnify his accomplishments. Running against a newcomer would mean Biden has to do more of the heavy lifting on his own record.”
Former President Donald Trump heavily criticized the then-candidate as “basement Biden” in 2020 for his low-key campaign, but Biden succeeded in November anyway. Biden may be using that strategy again this time out, going on vacation the week Trump was indicted in New York.
Another weakness with Trump is that he’s only four years younger than Biden.
The NBC poll found that 69% of those saying they didn’t want Biden to run again cited age as a reason. The president is already the oldest commander in chief in history and would be 86 years old at the end of a second term. The White House initially demurred Tuesday on whether Biden would serve the full eight years before clarifying that he would.
Bannon concedes that Biden’s polling numbers are concerning — his approval ratings have been stuck in the low 40s for more than a year — and said he’ll need to do a better job of defining his presidency and pointing out his accomplishments.
The Republican National Committee made a similar point in a newsletter sent within hours of Biden’s announcement.
“You would think that a sitting president campaigning for reelection with the slogan ‘finish the job’ would name at least one concrete first-term accomplishment in his announcement video,” RNC spokesman Tommy Pigott wrote. “Joe Biden’s reelection video is 3 minutes long, and he doesn’t name a single one.”
Biden has also drawn two primary challengers, and while neither is considered a threat to win the Democratic nomination, they’ve made more noise than was expected at this early date.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has launched his bid with backing from 14% of Biden supporters, according to USA Today, while self-help guru Marianne Williamson warned that younger voters won’t stick with the octogenarian incumbent next year. A New York Times-Siena College poll last summer found that 94% of Democrats aged 30 and under preferred a different nominee.
“I think that video was very out of touch, and that’s what people are feeling,” Williamson said. “I think an entire younger generation would stay home in droves in response to what that video is advancing as the administration’s pitch to the American people.”