If the latest polls on the 2028 presidential race are any indication, the specter of the 2024 race will cast a long shadow over how both parties make their decision — and that’s great news for President Donald Trump’s administration and awful news for the Democrats.
In the latest series of Emerson College polls, released Friday, Vice President J.D. Vance holds a commanding lead over pretty much everyone who might enter the 2028 race, with his closest competitor over 30 points behind.
Meanwhile, presumptive frontrunner (if just because of name) and 2024 Democratic standard-bearer Kamala Harris has slipped to second in the Democratic polls — behind another unelectable Biden administration official.
Moreover, when compared with a poll taken in November by Emerson, Vance has solidified his lead on the Republican side, while Kamala has dropped precipitously.
According to The Hill, the survey — taken on Tuesday and Wednesday among 1,000 registered voters made up of 416 Republican primary voters, with a +/- 4.8 percent margin of error on the Republican side — showed Vance with 46 points in a hypothetical primary matchup among potential Republican candidates.
Second place was Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was at 12 percent. No other candidate cracked double digits.
Third place was the first non-Trump official, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with 9 percent of the vote. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took 5 percent of the vote, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley were tied at 2 percent.
“This marks an improvement for Vance from Emerson’s November poll exploring a hypothetical 2028 Republican primary. Vance led in that poll by a smaller amount, with 30 percent compared to 5 percent for DeSantis and 3 percent for 2024 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy,” The Hill reported.
Would you support J.D. Vance in the 2028 election?
“Emerson College Polling Executive Director Spencer Kimball said in a release that Vance has ‘solidified’ himself as the front-runner, noting he had support from 52 percent of male Republican voters and voters over 60 years old.”
Solid, meanwhile, is the last thing you could say about the Democratic field in the same survey.
With a +/- 3 percent margin of error, first place was former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, at 16 percent. Harris was in second at 13 percent, followed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom at 12 percent.
Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who lost out on the veepstakes to permacreep Tim Walz, were tied at the bottom of the top five with 7 percent apiece.
But, perhaps the most telling number in the poll: 23 percent. That’s the number who say that they’re undecided.
Now, granted, we’ve barely even started on the midterms yet, and we’ve already had some surprises on the left side of the aisle (see: Mamdani, Zohran), but American politics has increasingly come to resemble the NFL or NBA: The moment one season ends, the next season begins. Same with elections.
This is a problem for the Democratic side, as The Hill pointed out:
The latest numbers are significantly different from Emerson’s November survey, when respondents were asked to write in their preferred 2028 candidate. Taken a couple weeks after the 2024 election, Harris received 37 percent support, followed by Newsom with 7 percent, Buttigieg with 4 percent and Shapiro with 3 percent. Another 35 percent were undecided.
Moreover, a generic ballot had both the Republican and Democratic candidates tied at 42 percent each. Given how the popular vote often influences the electoral vote — and given that the GOP has proved itself more than capable of winning the Electoral College without a majority of the popular vote — that means the Democrats are still in trouble.
Could this be that Buttigieg and Newsom have been getting themselves out there more than Harris has been? Perhaps, but that’s hardly been meliorative for either one of their chances. Newsom’s handling of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement riots in Los Angeles was both performative and impotent, and Buttigieg’s appearances have convinced everyone that he has the presence of mayonnaise on toast.
AOC is unelectable, and Josh Shapiro only looks good because he’s not Tim Walz and could potentially deliver Pennsylvania. Aside from that, however, he only looks good by comparison.
Meanwhile, Vance has earned a great deal of political capital from his performance as veep and — contra Walz’s “weird” remark about him on the campaign trail — has emerged as the voice of reason in Washington. Most importantly, he’s presented the most plausible version of what “Trumpism without Trump,” which the media keeps on trying to find, will look like.
Kamala Harris, meanwhile, can’t seem to decide whether or not she’s running for California governor. One imagines many Democrats hope she does, if just because it’ll effectively sideline her from the 2028 presidential contest.
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