A rematch of the 2020 election next year, pitting President Joe Biden against former president Donald Trump, would hurt down-ballot Republicans, a new poll has found.
If Trump is at the top of the ticket, Democrats would have a five-point advantage in the generic congressional ballot, leading Republicans 47 to 42 percent. Without Trump, Democrats and Republicans are deadlocked at 44 percent, according to the survey from WPA Intelligence released Wednesday and obtained by National Review.
In 2022, Republicans retook the House of Representatives with a 2.8-point advantage over Democrats when tallying votes for House candidates across the country. This translated to a net gain of ten seats. The group argued that Trump at the top of a ballot would mean Republicans almost certainly lose the House.
The survey was of 1,571 registered voters nationally and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent. Data was collected via an online panel between May 10 and 13.
While Biden is unpopular with voters, Trump is even more so. If held today, 47 percent of voters would choose Biden while only 40 percent would choose Trump. Twelve percent are undecided.
The 2024 Biden vs. Trump head-to-head and its corresponding follow-up congressional-ballot question was tested among a split sample of 789 registered voters.
The survey found that Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen hurts down-ballot Republicans in both the House and Senate. Asked if they would vote for a candidate who questions or denies Biden’s victory, only 37 percent of voters responded in the affirmative. Sixty-three percent said they would not.
Additionally, if Trump were to be charged with a crime either in Georgia or by special counsel Jack Smith at the federal level, his support would drop to 39 percent overall, while Biden’s support would be upped to 49 or 50 percent respectively.
“Trump would enter the 2024 race considerably weaker than where he stood on Election Day in 2020. Contrary to what one may hear on Truth Social, Trump’s indictment, in either the pending Georgia or federal cases, would energize Democrats, not Republicans,” explained Amanda Iovino, WPA Principal.
WPA noted that its CEO, Chris Wilson, is an adviser to the pro-Ron DeSantis PAC Never Back Down, but asserted that the poll was independently conducted by Iovino as a part of WPA’s ongoing public opinion research studies. The poll was not sponsored by Never Back Down or any of its affiliates.