Surveys show that nearly half of Americans believe Democrats should replace President Biden in the 2024 election. YouGov Poll It took place the morning after the first presidential debate.
Of those surveyed, 49% said Biden should be removed from the top of the shortlist to improve the party’s chances of winning, while 30% said he should remain in office. In the same pollForty-four percent of Americans surveyed said former President Trump should remain the nominee, while 38% said he should be replaced.
The poll was conducted the morning after Biden’s disastrous debate performance. Within minutes of the debate starting, Democrats began to panic about Biden’s lackluster debate performance. Biden rambled at times, appeared to have a sore throat and struggled to think clearly at various times throughout the debate. Trump made some inaccurate claims, but his delivery was forceful and forthright.
Biden’s performance prompted swift calls from anonymous Democratic Party officials and donors for Biden to resign and for the Democratic National Convention to be held in public in August.
Since the debate, Biden surrogates and campaign officials have maintained that Biden is not stepping down and that Democrats should stop publicly “playing with their heads.” At a rally in North Carolina on Friday, Biden said, “I’m not as good at debates as I used to be, but I know how to do this job.”
A YouGov poll on Biden’s replacement found that 50% of independents said Democrats should replace Biden, while 29% of Democrats said Biden should step down.
A majority of voters ages 45-64 also said Biden should be replaced, with 54% saying someone else should take his place. Half of voters ages 65 and older said Biden should be replaced, while 48% and 40% of voters ages 30-44 and 18-29, respectively, said Biden should be replaced.
A majority of white voters think Biden should be replaced, but only 30% of black voters say he should be replaced. Among Latino voters, there is a nearly 2-to-1 split in favor of replacing Biden. Voters of color are a key hurdle to Biden’s reelection.
Even before the debate, Trump and Biden were the least popular party candidates in at least the past three decades, according to the Pew Research Group. A Pew poll in early June found that 25% of Americans said they had an unfavorable view of both candidates, nearly double the number who had an unfavorable view of them in 2020.
A CNN instant poll found that 67% of viewers believed Trump won the debate, while just 33% believed Biden won. A YouGov poll on Friday morning showed respondents believed Trump won by a 2-to-1 margin.
In contrast, during the 2020 debate, Trump repeatedly interrupted and cut off Biden and the moderator, yet 60 percent believed Biden won the debate.
YouGov conducted the poll of 2,648 voters on Friday morning and the poll has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.
