President Biden remains convinced that voters want him to run for reelection, despite a recent New York Times/Siena College poll showing Democratic voters want someone other than him as their 2024 candidate.
“They want me to run,” he told an ABC News reporter when asked about the survey.
He was then presented with the percentage who said they wanted someone else, but he pushed back, focusing on a different figure in the poll showing that 92 percent of Democrats would vote for Biden if the alternative was former President Trump.
“Read the poll. Read the polls, Jack. You guys are all the same. That poll showed that 92 percent of Democrats, if I ran, would vote for me,” Biden replied.
President Biden tells me that despite most Democrats saying they want another candidate in 2024, most would still vote for him. pic.twitter.com/2aJ5kZe2WK
— Ben Gittleson (@bgittleson) July 12, 2022
The Times called the 92 percent figure "one glimmer of good news" for him in the survey.
President Biden is facing an alarming level of doubt from inside his own party, with 64 percent of Democratic voters saying they would prefer a new standard-bearer in the 2024 presidential campaign, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll, as voters nationwide have soured on his leadership, giving him a meager 33 percent job-approval rating. [...]
One glimmer of good news for Mr. Biden is that the survey showed him with a narrow edge in a hypothetical rematch in 2024 with former President Donald J. Trump: 44 percent to 41 percent.
The result is a reminder of one of Mr. Biden’s favorite aphorisms: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.” The poll showed that Democratic misgivings about Mr. Biden seemed to mostly melt away when presented with a choice between him and Mr. Trump: 92 percent of Democrats said they would stick with Mr. Biden. (NYT)
Asked about the poll, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre touted the same percentage.
"I would also say, from that very same poll, there were 92% of Democrats who support this president as well,” Jean-Pierre said. “There’s going to be many polls, they’re going to go up, they’re going to go down. This is not the thing that we are solely focused on. We are focused on things like today, signing this bipartisan gun reform legislation which will save lives. We have more work to do, absolutely.”
According to the survey, among Democrats who said they prefer a different candidate in 2024, "concerns about his age ranked at the top of the list..."