Election 2024: Trump Opens 10-Point Lead
Former President Donald Trump now has a double-digit lead for 2024, as support for re-electing President Joe Biden has faded in the past month.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that, in a two-way contest between Biden and Trump, 48% of Likely U.S. Voters would choose Trump and 38% would vote for Biden. Another 10% say they’d vote for some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
This is a reversal of our November survey, when Biden led by four points, with 46% to Trump’s 42%. The new survey also shows stronger support for third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In a three-way match-up between Biden, Trump and RFK Jr., 40% would vote for Trump, 32% for Biden and 16% for Kennedy. Last month, Kennedy had 12%.
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The survey of 892 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on December 6-7 and 10, 2023 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
If the 2024 election is a Biden-Trump rematch, 33% of voters say it is likely they would vote for a third-party candidate, including 16% who say it’s Very Likely. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of Democrats are at least somewhat likely to vote third-party if 2024 is a Biden-Trump rematch, as are 25% of Republicans and 35% of voters not affiliated with either major party.
Waning enthusiasm for Biden among Democrats is clearly a factor in shifting voter preferences since the November survey. In a two-way matchup between Biden and Trump, only 69% of Democratic voters would choose Biden, compared to 81% of Republican voters who would choose Trump. In the November survey, Biden got 79% of Democratic voters while Trump was at 73% among GOP voters.
The same pattern is evident in a three-way contest between Biden, Trump and RFK Jr. In such a matchup, Biden would only get 58% support from Democrats, while Kennedy would get 16%. In a three-way race, there are also more Democrats who would vote for Trump (16%) than there are Republicans who would vote for Biden (9%).
Among unaffiliated voters, Trump has a 12-point lead (45% to 33%) over Biden in a two-way matchup. In a three-way contest including RFK Jr., Trump would get 35% of unaffiliated voters, Biden 26% and Kennedy 21%.
In a two-way 2024 matchup, Trump leads by 20 points among men (52% to 32% for Biden), while women voters narrowly favor Biden (45% to 44% for Trump). Slightly more men (17%) than women voters (15%) would choose RFK Jr. in a three-way contest.
Fifty-one percent (51%) of whites, 28% of black voters and 53% of other minorities would vote for Trump in a 2024 rematch with Biden, while 38% of whites, 50% of black voters and 30% of other minorities would vote for Biden. In a three-way contest, 12% of whites, 23% of black voters and 25% of other minorities would vote for RFK Jr.
Voters under 40 are significantly more open to a third-party candidate than their elders. If the 2024 election is a Biden-Trump rematch, 50% of under-40 voters are at least somewhat likely to vote third-party, compared to 28% of those ages 40-64 and 21% of voters 65 and older. In a three-way matchup, RFK Jr. would get 23% among voters under 40, compared to 16% of those ages 40-64 and just nine percent (9%) of voters 65 and older.
Support for Kennedy is higher among self-identified moderate voters (20%) than among either conservatives (16%) or liberals (10%).
Breaking down the electorate by income categories, In a three-way race, Biden gets his highest level of support – 53% – from voters earning more than $200,000 a year, while those will annual incomes below $30,000 provide the most support for both Trump (46%) and Kennedy (19%).
Nearly half of American voters think Trump is guilty of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, and Democrats in particular want to see Trump punished.
More that 20% of voters who used mail-in ballots in 2020 admit they participated in at least one form of election fraud.
Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.
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The survey of 892 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on December 6-7 and 10, 2023 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research.
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