In some of the latest polling from the research firm Morning Consult, Joe Biden is once again in the lead in a hypothetical — though likely — rematch with former President Donald Trump in next year’s general election for president. Biden grabbed 43 percent of the support, while Trump had 42 percent. The numbers reflect the responses of a pool of registered voters.
That slim, leading margin for Biden represents a slight shift from the preceding set of Morning Consult’s polling on this question, when Trump was narrowly leading. Much has been made of recent national polling in the 2024 presidential race that shows a Trump lead, but these latest numbers from Morning Consult show more of what’s going on. In short, the race appears close, with Biden often — though not exclusively — holding an advantage, so it’s not that different from the set-up heading into the last presidential election when Biden won nationally by millions of votes.
Eleven percent of respondents in the Morning Consult numbers, which represented polling that was completed November 26, said they’d vote for someone else, though there is no ultra-recent precedent in presidential elections for a share of voters in that range actually sticking to that idea. Evidently under six percent of participating voters went with someone other than a major party’s candidate in 2016, when third party contenders got increasing buzz. The next time around, the Libertarian Party’s pick sunk even further and, after taking a large share of that non-major party vote in 2016, barely passed one percent nationally.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is currently running for president as an independent contender, but it seems frankly unlikely based on the entirety of the recent evidence that he’ll come close to succeeding. Just imagine how it’ll go when the campaign season really revs up and challenger campaigns start spotlighting the arguably extremist positions associated with Kennedy — positions aligning him with a generally small portion of the electorate.
