Biden has given no indication he plans to drop his 2024 re-election bid in the wake of the June 27 debate.
Topline
Vice President Kamala Harris is the most likely replacement for President Joe Biden if he drops his 2024 presidential bid, and while polls suggest the debate debacle appears to have dented Biden’s standing against former President Donald Trump, Harris doesn’t fare much better against the former president, and in some cases, performs worse.Key Facts
A flurry of polls conducted in the wake of the debate show Harris performs roughly the same as Biden against Trump (who has been leading the president by a slim margin for months), with some surveys showing Harris with a slight advantage to Biden and others showing Biden outperforming Harris in a hypothetical matchup with Trump.
Harris also polls better than other Democrats commonly floated as replacement candidates to Biden, if the election were held today, but the polls don’t factor in how months of campaigning could change voters’ perceptions of many of the lesser-known candidates that don’t have the benefit of national name recognition like Harris does.
Harris outperforms Biden, and three other potential candidates commonly floated to replace him, in a hypothetical matchup against Trump—but she would still lose to the former president by two points, according to a CNN/SSRS poll (margin of error 3.5) conducted June 28-30 that also found Biden would lose to Trump by six points.
A YouGov poll conducted July 3-6 contradicts the CNN/SSRS findings: more Democrats and independents who lean Democrat prefer Biden over Harris as the nominee, 47% to 32%, while 21% said they weren’t sure (margin of error 4).
