New poll finds 53% of GOP voters would back Trump in 2024 and 72% of Democrats would back Biden

As Donald Trump weighs whether and when to announce his official campaign for a bid at reelection in 2024, a recent poll suggests that he’s the favoured Republican nominee if the GOP primary were to be held today.

In a new poll conducted by Politico and Morning Consult, 53 per cent of respondents who identified as being Republican voters or leaning that way politically said they would vote for the former US president to represent the GOP ticket in 2024.

Few of the other 16 Republican candidates suggested as possible frontrunners gained more than one per cent of the respondents’ support. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis secured second to the one-term president with 23 per cent, ahead of former vice president Mike Pence with 7 per cent, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz with 3 per cent. Behind those four, were Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Nikki Haley at 2 per cent.

On the other side of the aisle, 72 per cent of Democrat or Democratic-leaning independents surveyed in the poll said that if the primary was held today, they’d vote for Joe Biden to represent the Democratic ticket in 2024.

Twenty per cent of those respondents, however, said they’d opt to vote for someone else, while 8 per cent stated they’d simply not vote.

The news from the Politico poll is perhaps a boon for the US president, who just this week docked in a dismal approval rating of just 38 per cent. In that poll, conducted by SSRS and released yesterday by CNN, it placed Mr Biden’s numbers as actually slumping to one point lower than what his predecessor – and potential challenger in 2024 – had in July 2018.

Though Trump has yet to officially announce his campaign to return to the White House, he’s spent more than a year teasing crowds at rallies as he stumps for candidates he’s backed in various midterm races.

As recently as this past week, the one-term president hinted at his possible intention to seek a second term when he called a gossip columnist for the New York Post to discuss his ex-wife Ivana’s recent death and while chatting, told the reporter that 78 – the age Trump would be if he were elected again – is not too old for the Oval Office.

“Look, let’s us just manage to get through this awful painful experience,” Mr Trump, now 76, said. “And after this... just remember... just remember what I’m telling you... 78 is not old.”

The age of a US president has come under intense scrutiny recently, particularly as media reports have emerged from inside the Biden administration that there could be concern within the party about the 79-year-old president seeking reelection when he’d be days away from celebrating his 82nd birthday if successful and would be 86 at the end of a second term.

Mr Biden has indicated on multiple occasions that he fully intends to run for a second term should he remain in good health.