Americans more confident about who they don’t support than who they do support in 2024 race: Poll

(A hill) – American voters are more defined by who they don’t support in the 2024 presidential race than who they do support, a new poll finds.

Monmouth University Survey, released Thursday, pitted Democratic President Biden against Republican former President Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in hypothetical one-on-one matchups. Desantis officially joined Trump and Biden are in the race this week, but Pence has not yet announced his candidacy.

The poll found that in each hypothetical, 44 to 46 percent of voters said they would “definitely” not support Biden, and 7 to 8 percent said they would “probably” not vote for him.

About a third of likely voters said they would definitely vote for Biden over Trump and DeSantis — or 32 percent and 31 percent, respectively. Twenty-seven percent say they would definitely support him against Pence.

Against Biden, 46 percent of voters say they definitely won’t vote for Trump, while 29 percent say they definitely will.

Forty-one percent of voters say they definitely won’t support DeSantis against Biden, while 26 percent say they definitely will. And 36 percent say they definitely won’t vote for Pence against Biden, while 18 percent say they definitely will.

“Negative opinion can be hard to change, and when it does, it tends to go in the wrong direction for the candidate,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in the latest issue. “That’s not to say those views won’t change in the next year and a half, but these results are a sign of how few voters can really be captured in our hyper-partisan political environment.”

In recent weeks, the Republican Party presidential election has become more crowded with the participation of DeSantis and Senator Tim Scott (RS.C.) in the race, joining Trump, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Trump continued survey at the front of a hypothetical GOP primary. But now that Biden has launched his long-awaited re-election bid, the race may be up for a revenge of the 2020 doubles competition, although some polls have shown low enthusiasm for another term in the White House.

The recent poll, conducted May 18-23, surveyed 907 registered voters and results have a margin of error of plus or minus 5.5 percentage points.