Most Utah voters don’t want Biden to seek reelection
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A large majority of Utah voters don’t want President Joe Biden to run for reelection, including more than 2 in 5 Utah Democrats.
A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll found 74% of Utah voters don’t think Biden should run for reelection, 24% believe he should, and 3% don’t know.
Unsurprisingly, Utah Republicans are driving opposition to Biden seeking another term. The poll found 83% of Utah Republicans don’t want Biden to run again compared with 76% of voters who identify as other and 46% of Utah Democrats.
“These numbers look pretty consistent with national numbers,” said Michael Barber, an associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University. “In general, you have pretty large majorities of Americans that indicated they don’t want Biden to run for reelection, even among Democrats at the moment.”
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The new poll reinforces the sentiment found in a May Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll showing the level of Biden’s unpopularity in the state. That poll found 65% of registered Utah voters disapproved of Biden’s job performance, up from 61% last December.
Biden lost Utah decisively in the 2020 election, but he received nearly 38% of the vote — a higher percentage than any Democratic presidential candidate in the state since 1964 — thanks to Trump’s relative unpopularity and no major third-party candidate. Barber said if the 2024 race pits Biden and Trump against each other again, “I think we might see similarly large numbers” for Biden, but not if he runs against a more traditional candidate.
“If he’s facing a more traditional Republican, I think we might see a lot of that support disappear and I think that’s because there’s a lot of voters in Utah who want to vote for Republicans but don’t want to vote for Donald Trump,” he said. “If Trump is their only option, they might vote for Biden again, but if another Republican is an option, I think they might be included to vote for DeSantis or some of these other more traditional Republicans.”
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The Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll found Trump polling at 27% among Utah Republicans, neck-and-neck with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 26%, followed by former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., at 7%, and tied at 5%, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence.
The percentage of Democrats in Utah who don’t want Biden to seek a second term is similar to the results of a CBS News poll of Democrats nationwide earlier this year. Democrats unenthusiastic about a second Biden campaign most cited the 80-year-old president’s age as why they didn’t want him to run again. Other top reasons were believing it’s time for someone new, liking another Democratic candidate more and Biden’s job performance as president.
“From what I’ve seen in surveys, the underlying reasons in these numbers is mostly about his age and how old he will be,” Barber said. “I think he works hard to put out an image of youth and vitality as much as he can, but there are limits.”
