Newsweek, June 2024
Despite calls for President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race after his shaky debate performance on Thursday, a new poll has found that none of the top names being floated to replace him, including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, would do better in a head-to-head matchup against Donald Trump. There is no evidence to suggest that Biden will abandon his reelection campaign, despite polls consistently showing that voters think Biden, 81, is too old to serve a second term. Seth Schuster, a Biden campaign spokesman, told Newsweek after Biden debated former President Donald Trump on Thursday that the president “is not dropping out.”
Biden responded to critics calling for him to drop out at a rally in North Carolina a day after the debate, saying he “would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job.” A Date for Progress flash poll, conducted on Friday, found that the number of likely voters who think Biden should remain as the Democratic nominee for president has declined. The poll surveyed 1,011 U.S. likely voters, including 387 probable Democrat voters, and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points. The poll found only 51 percent of Democratic likely voters—think Biden should remain the party’s candidate after his debate performance, down 12 points from early March.
