Biden trails Trump, Haley, Scott in 2024 race: poll
President Biden is trailing former President Trump, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in several hypothetical 2024 match-ups in a new survey from Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll shared with The Hill.
The poll found that 44 percent of respondents said they would vote for Trump when asked about a hypothetical match-up between him and Biden in 2024, while 40 percent said they would back the current president. A separate 15 percent said they were unsure or didn't know.
The polling is largely unchanged from a similar Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll conducted in July, which had Trump at 45 percent and Biden at 40 percent.
The poll also found that 41 percent said they would back Haley, compared to 37 percent who said they would support Biden. When asked about a match between Biden and Scott, the president received 37 percent, while Scott received 39 percent.
Still, both hypothetical match-ups featured larger shares of respondents saying they didn't know or were unsure who they would support; 21 percent in the Biden-Haley match-up and 25 percent in the Biden-Scott match-up.
The poll, however, found that Biden performed better against former Vice President Mike Pence — Biden received 42 percent while Pence received 36 percent; Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who trailed Biden 42 percent to 38 percent; and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who came in at 37 percent while Biden received 39 percent.
At least 20 percent of those surveyed in each of those match-ups were unsure or didn't know who they would back.
Still, the close match-ups between Biden and many of the GOP candidates suggest the 2024 election could be another nail-biter.
"No question that President Joe Biden is showing lagging national poll numbers and that now multiple GOP candidates are ahead of him. This is a new development as [non-Trump] potential opponents like Haley get exposure," said Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll.
The polling also comes as Trump remains the front-runner in the 2024 primary as DeSantis, Pence, Haley and others have struggled to close the gap between themselves and the former president.
Meanwhile, Biden has grappled with a slew of negative polls that point to age as an issue for the president. A notable Washington Post columnist has called on Biden not to run again in 2024, though the president has made no indication that he'll change plans.
The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll was conducted Sept. 12-14 with 2,103 registered voters. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll.
The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Poll and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.