President Joe Biden believes that the American public wants him to stay in the 2024 race, even though his perspective seems to be a bit askew.
The forty-sixth president told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday that, despite growing calls from inside the Democratic Party for him to withdraw, his rallies around the country have inspired him to remain resolute.
“I want to make sure I was right, that the average voter out there wanted Joe Biden, and I’m confident they do,” Biden said. “We’re not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere.”
But the people don’t actually seem to want Biden. A new poll by Black Futures Lab, conducted long before the president’s disastrous debate performance last month, indicates that Black voters—whose historic turnout put Biden into the White House in 2020—would lean toward Vice President Kamala Harris if given the option.
The poll, which ranked the popularity of electable politicos among more than 200,000 Black voters, saw Harris soar with a 71 percent approval rating. Biden was close behind, with 68 percent of Black Americans approving of the job he’s doing. Donald Trump, meanwhile, tanked, with just a 5 percent approval rating among the Black community.
Dissent against Biden’s campaign is center stage even at his own rallies. Steps away from the podium at his Wisconsin rally on Friday, a protester waved a sign urging him to “pass the torch.”
In the days since Biden and Trump’s painful face-off, the former president has solidly overtaken Biden in the polls. Several national polls published in the aftermath of the rocky debate figure Trump with a multipoint lead over Biden. A New York Times/Siena College poll pegged Trump with a seven-point lead when independent candidates such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were thrown into the mix, a CBS News/YouGov poll found Trump to have a four-point lead under similar circumstances, and a Wall Street Journal study listed Trump with a six-point advantage.
Other Democratic options didn’t fare much better in postdebate polling against Trump—all except for one unexpected, left-field candidate: Michelle Obama, who in two separate Reuters/Ipsos studies polled with an 11- and 12-point lead over Trump in a possible November matchup.
Harris, meanwhile, has skirted addressing direct calls for her to overtake the top of the ballot by focusing her joint campaign with Biden on one objective: defeating Donald Trump.
“People voted in record numbers in 2020,” Harris said at the Essence Festival in New Orleans on Saturday. “This is what was able to happen, and when everyone votes in those numbers again in 122 days, we can see it through.”
