Just days before President Joe Biden is expected to launch his re-election bid, a new poll shows that nearly three-quarters of the country does not want him to seek a second term in the White House.
The NBC News survey showed that 70 percent of Americans, including 51 percent of Democrats, don’t want Biden to run for president. Roughly half (48 percent) cite his age as a major reason why. Biden is currently 80 years old.
According to the survey, 60 percent of Americans do not want former President Donald Trump to run for the presidency either.
“The president needs to reflect the age group in the country. They should both retire,” one Democratic poll respondent from Washington state told NBC. “It is someone else’s turn.”
Should Biden formally announce his candidacy, there is a high likelihood he will square off against Trump in 2024, as Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination by a roughly 30-point margin.
The poll found that 46 percent of Republicans would favor Trump as the nominee if the primary election were held today. Thirty-one percent favored likely challenger Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Among Democrats, 88 percent say they will definitely or probably vote for Biden.
Overall, 47 percent of registered voters say they will vote for the eventual Republican nominee, compared to 41 percent who say they will definitely or probably vote for Biden in the general election.
“At this stage, 2024 is shaping up to be a sequel of the 2020 election,” Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research, which conducted this poll with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, told NBC. “Sequels are frequently hits at the box office, but apparently not at the ballot box. It’s clear that people do not want a Biden-Trump rematch.”
Only 41 percent of the respondents in the poll approve of Biden’s job performance, with 54 percent who disapprove — a decline from the same survey in January.
Biden holds an 83 percent approval rating among Democrats, while 30 percent of independents and six percent of Republicans approve of the job he’s done as president.
