The first phase of the 2024 presidential primary season is officially underway, bringing with it a cavalcade of early polling designed to answer a seemingly basic question: whether President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, have the support of their respective parties.
That topic, though, is more complicated than it seems, reflecting voters’ complex attitudes toward the two men, which in both cases fall far short of either an enthusiastic endorsement or a definitive rejection.
At first glance, Trump, who launched his third bid for the presidency in November, and Biden, who is yet to officially announce his reelection plans, seem to face similar challenges.
Just 44% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll said they’d prefer to see Trump win the party nomination in 2024, with an even slimmer 31% on the Democratic side saying they’d like to see Biden renominated.
That’s in line with other recent polls, including a December CNN survey that found just 38% of Republican-aligned voters and 40% of Democratic aligned-voters thought their parties should renominate Trump and Biden, respectively.
But while many Republicans and Democrats would prefer to see someone else nominated, the vague concept of “someone else” isn’t an eligible challenger for the presidency. And when it comes to specific, viable rivals, Trump and Biden currently face very different situations.
So far, one potential primary challenger to Trump has significantly broken through among the GOP faithful, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, although polls have varied on his precise strength against the former president.
When a recent Monmouth University poll asked GOP and GOP-leaning voters an open-ended question about whom they’d like to see as their party’s nominee next year, most named either…
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