Almost three-fourths of registered Democrats want someone other than Vice President Kamala Harris to be the party’s nominee, a CNN poll found Wednesday.
The finding exposes a lack of enthusiasm for Harris as the party’s de facto nominee, who appears to be hand-selected by top Democrats.By simply choosing Harris for the nomination instead of holding a democratic process, Democrats will nullify about 14 million votes cast during the Democrat primaries for President Joe Biden.
The poll asked Democrats/Democrat-leaning independents who are registered to vote and prefer the Democrat Party to nominate a candidate other than Harris in 2024. “Is there a specific person you’d like to see the Democratic Party nominate for president, or do you just want to see someone besides Kamala Harris?” the poll asked.
Respondents replied as such:
- Just someone besides Kamala Harris: 73 percent
- A specific person (NET) (specify): 27 percent
- Michelle Obama: 5 percent
- Gavin Newsom: 4 percent
- Pete Buttigieg: 3 percent
- Josh Shapiro: 3 percent
- Gretchen Whitmer: 3 percent
- Bernie Sanders: 3 percent
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: 2 percent
- J.B. Pritzker: 1 percent
The poll sampled 1,631 voters from July 22-23, 2024, with a ± three percent margin of error. The survey is one of the first published surveys after Biden endorsed Harris for president.
Harris appeared to slightly improve upon Biden’s lead among voters ages 18-34 but not enough to overcome former President Donald Trump’s inroads with the demographic, another sign of a lack of enthusiasm for Harris, the poll found.
Biden won the young vote — under the age of 35 — by 21 points in 2020. In contrast, Harris underperforms Biden, according to the CNN poll. She only holds a nine-point lead, 12 points worse than Biden’s performance.Trump appeared to make inroads with the youngest demographic, making it difficult for Harris to perform as well as Biden, according to CNN analyst Harry Enten.
In 2024, young voters are split (49-49 percent) between identifying as Republicans and Democrats. In 2020, according to Pew Research, 56 percent of young voters identified as Democrats, while 39 percent identified as Republicans.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
