Former President Donald Trump would beat former first lady Michelle Obama in a hypothetical 2024 head-to-head matchup, according to a poll conducted earlier this year.
President Joe Biden’s debate performance against Trump on June 27 cemented the concerns of many Americans that, at 81, the Democrat is too old to serve a second term as president.
The widely panned performance has prompted calls for Biden to step aside as the Democratic Party’s nominee in a bid to prevent Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, from winning back the White House in November. However, Seth Schuster, a Biden campaign spokesperson, told Newsweek after the debate that Biden was “not dropping out.”
Several names have been floated as contenders to replace Biden—including Vice President Kamala Harris, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer—at the top of the Democratic ticket. Odds of Obama, the wife of former President Barack Obama, possibly replacing Biden as the party’s nominee have surged, despite her repeatedly saying she does not intend to ever run for president.
In March, a poll by DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners indicated that Obama would not beat Trump in a hypothetical matchup.
The survey of 1,000 likely voters found that Obama would receive 44 percent of the vote, compared to Trump’s 47 percent. The same poll also had Trump beating Biden, with 46 percent of the vote to Biden’s 43 percent.
Former first lady Michelle Obama at the U.S. Open in New York on August 28, 2023. She has been touted as a contender to replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee ahead of…
Former first lady Michelle Obama at the U.S. Open in New York on August 28, 2023. She has been touted as a contender to replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee ahead of November’s election.
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Another poll conducted in March had Obama trailing Trump by seven points, 50 percent to 43 percent.
At the time, the former first lady’s office dismissed speculation about her launching a 2024 bid for the White House.
“As former First Lady Michelle Obama has expressed several times over the years, she will not be running for president,” Crystal Carson, the director of communications for Obama’s office, told NBC News. “Mrs. Obama supports President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ re-election campaign.”
Newsweek has contacted Obama’s office for comment via email.
Meanwhile, a poll conducted after Thursday’s debate found that none of the top names being floated to replace Biden would do better than the president in a two-way matchup against Trump.
Trump criticized the former first lady’s polling during a campaign event on Friday, saying he didn’t believe Biden would drop out of the race “because he does better in polls than any of the Democrats they’re talking about.” He added: “They polled everybody. They polled Michelle Obama, she polls very badly. No, she polls terribly.”
Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, previously told Newsweek that it is “not very surprising that most viable Democrats fare similarly against Trump given how polarized and closely divided the country is politically.”
“It’s virtually the case that almost any Democrat would perform similarly against almost any Republican given how strongly partisan identification is correlated with vote choice in recent elections,” he said.
“There are just not many minds to make up or voters on the fence,” Panagopoulos continued. “The vast majority of voters know which party’s candidate they will vote for long before the election and even before the actual candidates are known. That said, even minor differences can be consequential in an election likely to be decided by a razor-thin margin in a handful of states.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Source link : https://www.newsweek.com/michelle-obama-chances-beating-trump-poll-1919381
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Publish date : 2024-07-01 07:02:50
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