Pete Buttigieg beats Joe Biden in New Hampshire 2024 poll
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg narrowly beat President Biden in a new 2024 presidential preference poll of New Hampshire Democrats — a bad sign for Biden if he plans to run for a second term.
Buttigieg, 40, had the support of 17% of likely Democratic primary voters in the University of New Hampshire survey released Tuesday — versus Biden’s 16%.
The poll found that 74% of Democrats in the early-primary state said they don’t want Biden to run again as inflation hits four-decade highs.
Biden says he plans to seek a second term despite turning 80 in November, but had just 16% support among New Hampshire Democrats, followed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), each at 10%.
The poll was conducted July 21-25 and the Democratic sample had a +/-4.7 percentage-point margin of error.
The results mirror a national New York Times/Siena College poll released this month that found 64% of Democrats across the country don’t want Biden to run again. That poll found that among all Americans, Biden’s approval rating was at 33%.
Other surveys found Biden’s support crumbling among core Democratic-leaning groups. For example, a Quinnipiac University poll in June found that just 22% of Americans ages 18-34 approve of Biden’s performance — the lowest rating of any age group.
Just 24% of Hispanic voters and 49% of black voters told Quinnipiac they approved of Biden’s performance.
And June survey data show Biden’s popularity slipping even in his childhood hometown of Scranton in a bad omen for his chances of carrying swing-state Pennsylvania in 2024.
Biden already is the oldest-ever US president and he insists that he will seek re-election, but there are widespread doubts, including among fellow Democrats. He would be 86 if he leaves office in 2029.
Former President Donald Trump is teasing a potential 2024 rematch against Biden.
Biden took office after winning the most votes of any candidate in a US general election, but his support in polls collapsed following the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 and has not recovered amid economic woes including high gas prices and soaring inflation.
Biden and his aides regularly say that he intends to run again. He said this month that “I would not be disappointed” to face Trump in 2024.
Biden said at a news conference in March, “The next election, I’d be very fortunate if I had that same man running against me.”
At his second solo White House press conference in January, Biden said he intends to keep Kamala Harris as his running mate in 2024.
In December, Biden said in an interview with ABC News anchor David Muir that he’d run again if he’s in “good health.”
“If I’m in the health I’m in now — I’m in good health — then, in fact, I would run again,” Biden said. “I’m a great respecter of fate. Fate has intervened in my life many, many times.”
