Former President Trump beats President Biden with independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on a hypothetical 2024 ballot, according to a new poll.
The latest Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll showed Trump leading Biden by 7 points in a one-on-one match-up 48 percent to 41 percent, respectively.
Trump’s lead rose slightly to 8 points with Kennedy added into the mix. In that hypothetical three-way race, Trump scored 41 percent to Biden’s 33 percent, while Kennedy raked in 18 percent.
With independent candidate Cornel West and the Green Party’s Jill Stein also added to the ticket alongside Kennedy, Trump’s lead over Biden climbed to 11 points, with 42 percent to the incumbent’s 31 percent.
The polling highlights ongoing concerns about whether independent contenders could suck up support for Biden’s reelection bid as many Americans report feeling wary of a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024.
Nearly two-thirds of voters in the poll said the country “needs another choice” this year if Biden and Trump end up as their parties’ respective nominees. And more than half — or 55 percent — said they’d consider an “independent moderate candidate” in that case.
Majorities in the poll also expressed worries about Biden’s age and doubts about his fitness to serve if elected to another four years in the Oval Office, with 51 percent saying they think Biden is “getting worse” as commander in chief.
The president’s campaign has worked to shrug off those concerns, projecting confidence in the incumbent’s record and pitching Trump, the GOP front-runner, as a threat to democracy.
Trump will face off with his top Republican challenger, Nikki Haley, in New Hampshire’s primary Tuesday in the race for the party’s nomination. Biden is not on the state’s Democratic primary ballot, but a write-in campaign for the incumbent is underway.
The poll was conducted Jan. 17-18 among 2,346 registered voters. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll.
The 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.