Poll: Majority of Republicans would support Trump in 2024
President Donald Trump is the favored Republican candidate for a 2024 run, beating other notable Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence, by a double-digit margin, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Tuesday.
Trump gets 53 percent of support among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents for a hypothetical 2024 Republican primary, according to the poll of registered voters. Pence came in second at only 12 percent support. Donald Trump Jr. got the third-highest support at 8 percent, while other Republican figures, including Sens. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney, and Nikki Haley each got less than 5 percent support.
With Trump losing the 2020 presidential election, he is still constitutionally eligible to run for a second term in 2024 or later, at which point he would be at least in his late 70s. Trump has delayed conceding the election to President-elect Joe Biden, and his legal team is continuing its fight to reverse results in key swing states.
While some members of his own party have pushed for Trump to concede, several other prominent Republicans have taken a neutral stance on who the next president will be. If Trump were to run in 2024, he would be a formidable force in the party, potentially crowding out other GOP hopefuls. His cultural cachet among the MAGA base is already enough to disincentivize Republicans from antagonizing him — including with regards to an election concession this year.
Trump’s resolve on the election is not without consequences. The administration’s refusal to acknowledge Biden as the next president stonewalled the former vice president’s team from accessing federal resources necessary to immediately move ahead with the transition.
But the administration recognized Biden's electoral victory on Monday — just after the poll was conducted. Pressure from a growing number of Republican senators was also mounting on the administration to acknowledge Trump's defeat. Still, while Trump gave his blessing to the administration starting the transition process, he still refused to concede, vowing to continue his legal battles.
A majority of voters, particularly among Democrats, support the way Biden is handling the presidential transition, with 62 percent of voters approving. That number drops to 27 percent among Republicans, according to Tuesday’s poll.
A majority of respondents said the coronavirus and other health care issues should be Biden’s top priority for his first 100 days in office. Sixty-eight percent said Biden should prioritize controlling the coronavirus; a new coronavirus aid package and a vaccine distribution plan each got 67 percent support.
The poll was conducted Nov. 21-23 online among 1,990 registered voters. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 2 percentage points.
