Biden vs Trump in 2024? Voters don’t seem overjoyed at the prospect

Voters may end up having to choose between the two (so far) single-term presidents, writes Chris Stevenson – but they don’t have to like it

Donald Trump, left, could go up against incumbent president Joe Biden (AP)

A Joe Biden vs Donald Trump contest in 2024? It seems voters may not be so enamoured with the idea of a rerun of the 2020 presidential election.

A number of behind-closed-doors meetings took place at the White House this week, in which – according to NBC News – Democratic strategists and activists were given a message: spread the gospel about the president’s record in office. This suggests that Biden could be preparing to run again. Meanwhile, the congressional committee looking into the circumstances surrounding the US Capitol riot on 6 January 2021 is reported to be preparing to vote on whether to ask the Department of Justice to pursue criminal charges against Trump.

The former president has consistently rejected the picture painted by the committee, which has suggested that his involvement was central to what took place. But whatever the outcome when its members convene on Monday, it is another controversy in a re-election campaign that can at best be described as tepid.

Against this backdrop, the polling carried out by a number of organisations around a possible Biden vs Trump campaign has produced varied results during the past couple of weeks – from Biden being up by eight percentage points to Trump being up by five. A poll recently released by CNN showed that around six in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (62 per cent) want the GOP to nominate someone other than Trump to stand in 2024, while 59 per cent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they would prefer their party to nominate someone other than Biden.

The results of the midterms in November showed that voters weren’t completely sold on either candidate, with Biden’s relatively low approval numbers – which are now higher than they were in the summer at nearly 43 per cent, even if a majority still disapprove of the job the president is doing – keeping him away from the campaign trail in a number of battleground states.

As for Trump, a number of the high-profile candidates he endorsed failed at the ballot box, and the wider “red wave” that some had expected failed to materialise. Indeed, the proportion of Republican-aligned voters who want Trump to run in 2024 has declined in CNN polls throughout the year. In January, 50 per cent said they wanted Trump to be the GOP nominee, and 49 per cent wanted a different candidate. By July, support for Trump was down to 44 per cent, and now that figure is down even further, to 38 per cent.

Voters may end up having to choose between Biden and Trump – but that doesn’t mean they will like it.