Poll shows 36 percent support Trump’s reelection, 43 percent prefer generic Democrat

Only about one-third of registered voters say they’ll vote to reelect President Trump in 2020, according to a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill on Tuesday.

The poll found that 36 percent of voters support Trump in 2020, with 25 percent of them saying they’d definitely vote for the president. Meanwhile, 43 percent say they’d vote for an unnamed Democratic candidate in next year’s elections.

{mosads}Ten percent of voters say they would vote for an independent or another candidate, and 11 percent are undecided more than a year and half out from the 2020 elections.

Meanwhile, Trump’s approval numbers have remained steady amid the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, with 45 percent who approve of the president’s handling of the job and 55 percent who disapprove.

But the president faces a hurdle on likability. Twenty-nine percent of voters say they like him, while 58 percent dislike Trump.

“Trump’s reelection number remains low, but he is not yet facing a specific candidate,” said Mark Penn, co-director of Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll.

“A lot of voters are shopping for an alternative despite widespread approval of his economic and anti terrorism policies.”

More Democrats are jumping into the race for the 2020 nomination, and of the candidates, former Vice President Joe Biden leads in terms of voter preference, with 24 percent picking him.

Biden got 23 percent of the vote when 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was removed. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is steady in second place. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) is in third, but gets bumped down to fourth when Clinton is polled, with 8 percent of support.

Biden, Sanders and O’Rourke are all considering White House bids and expected to make decisions in the coming weeks.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) have all recently announced their intentions to seek the presidency. But at the time the poll was conducted, Harris wasn’t officially in the race.

When Clinton’s name isn’t factored in, Harris is right behind O’Rourke at 7 percent. Warren and Gillibrand lag in the low-single digits.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, who are also running, are at 2 percent and 1 percent, respectively.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll online survey of 1,540 registered voters was conducted from Jan. 15 to 16.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll. The Hill will be working with Harvard/Harris Poll throughout 2019.

Full poll results will be posted online later this week. The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.