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While Democrat Party officials continue their discussions on whether Joe Biden should remain in the presidential race, a new series of polling reveals how other Democrats could fare in a hypothetical matchup against President Donald Trump.
According to Emerson College’s latest survey of 1,370 Registered Voters, President Trump would handily defeat Biden, along with nine other potential Democrat candidates who have been seen as possible replacements for the incumbent.
Against Vice President Kamala Harris, the 45th president easily defeated the Democrat by six points (49 to 43 percent) in a head-to-head race nationwide.
As RSBN previously reported, Harris is supposedly the top choice among Democrats to replace Biden should he end his bid for the nomination.
Another frequently floated Democrat pick that President Trump would defeat, the poll found, was Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., who was behind the 45th president by a whopping eight points (48 to 40 percent).
The 45th president expanded his lead even more against Biden’s Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg (49 to 39 percent), and swing-state governors, including Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer (48 to 38 percent) and Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro (46 to 38 percent) in a nationwide race.
In a matchup with more far-left hypothetical candidates, President Trump defeated Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a left-wing independent senator who sought the Democratic nomination in 2016 and 2020, and Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who also sought her party’s nomination four years ago.
The Emerson poll found that President Trump defeated Sanders by six points (48 to 42 percent) in a head-to-head race and Warren by 10 points (49 to 39 percent) across the nation.
Like Biden, Sanders would likely face concerns over his age, as he would be 83 by the time he took office and 87 by the conclusion of his first term.
Against his former rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Trump would defeat her by seven points (48 to 41 percent), meaning that the 45th president would now swing the popular vote margin by eight points from Clinton’s narrow two-point win of this from 2016 if he were to carry this vote share.
Besides Biden, President Trump’s narrowest polling margin was interestingly against former Vice President Al Gore, who famously lost the 2000 presidential election in one of the closest races in American history.
The 45th president defeated Gore by five points (47 to 42 percent) in a hypothetical nationwide race, the poll found.
Nonetheless, despite calls from party members asking him to drop out, Biden actually fared better than other Democrats against President Trump, though he ultimately still lost in the survey.
The 45th president led Biden by four points in a five-way race (44 to 40 percent), which included Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (six percent), Independent Cornel West (one percent), and Green Party candidate Jill Stein (one percent).
In a head-to-head race, President Trump led by three points (46 to 43 percent), slightly narrowing the gap between the two candidates. However, the 45th president appears to still be in better shape than Biden should he fall behind in the popular vote against the incumbent.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast, President Trump has many more pathways to victory against Biden if he lost the popular vote to the incumbent.
Nonetheless, As RSBN previously reported, it could be politically detrimental for Democrats to replace Biden, especially during this late point in the race.
Unless he drops out on his own accord, Democrats would likely have no choice but to renominate Biden. If they decide to replace him, more than 1,976 of the 3,894 delegates—who already pledged to support Biden—would have to defy the will of their own primary voters and refuse to vote for him during the DNC’s virtual nomination this summer.