The 2024 Presidential Election: Evolving Political Coalitions and Familiar Partisan Divisions

Key Points

• Americans are roughly equally divided in feelings of optimism and pessimism about the country’s future. However, there is a large racial gap. Black Americans are uniquely optimistic about the future of the United States. Most white Americans feel pessimistic.
• There is far more disagreement among Democrats than Republicans when it comes to the political priorities of their respective parties.
• Joe Biden has a strikingly low approval rate, but he remains ahead of Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup at this point in the race and is tied with Ron DeSantis.
• Americans remain sharply polarized, but Democrats have far more negative attitudes about the Republican Party than about Republican voters. Similarly, Republicans feel much less hostile about Democratic voters than they do about the Democratic Party.

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Executive Summary

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the AEI Survey Center on American Life conducted a national survey of Americans that explored a wide range of political attitudes, current voting preferences, and perceptions of the political parties.

A weary public is evenly divided over America’s future. Roughly half of Americans are optimistic about the days ahead, while slightly more are pessimistic (48 percent vs. 51 percent, respectively). A stark racial divide emerges on this question—black Americans are far more optimistic about the future than are white Americans (63 percent vs. 42 percent).

Americans see inflation (62 percent), the affordability of health care (58 percent), and gun violence (58 percent) as major problems facing the nation. Crime (53 percent), drug addiction (51 percent), and the federal budget deficit (51 percent) are also cited as major problems.

Large partisan differences arise regarding the problems the country is facing. Climate change is a top concern for Democrats (66 percent) but not Republicans (13 percent), and illegal immigration is cited by 64 percent of Republicans as a major problem, compared to relatively few Democrats (19 percent).

There are notable differences in what Democrats and Republicans want their respective parties to focus on. There is little consensus among Democrats about the policy priorities for leadership, which include strengthening the economy (19 percent), keeping abortion legal and available (16 percent), dealing with climate change (14 percent), and making health care more affordable (12 percent). In contrast, Republicans appear more aligned in their priorities. Nearly three-fourths of Republicans would like to see their party focus on one of three areas: strengthening the economy (31 percent), reducing taxes and government spending (25 percent), and fixing the immigration system (17 percent).

Looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election, Joe Biden appears to be in a perilous position for an incumbent, receiving a low approval rating among the public. What’s more, few Americans say Biden has accomplished much during his time in office, and young voters—a crucial Democratic constituency—express little confidence in him. Only 15 percent of Democrats age 18–29 say Biden is their first choice in 2024, and just 34 percent of young adults hold a favorable opinion of Biden, far fewer than older Americans.

Despite these weaknesses, in head-to-head matchups with the leading Republican contenders—Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis—President Biden remains competitive or even a slight favorite. Biden leads Trump by a significant margin among registered voters (48 percent vs. 41 percent) and is statistically tied with DeSantis (43 percent vs. 42 percent).

Even after widespread allegations of voter fraud, most Americans believe the 2020 election was legitimate (67 percent) and that votes for state and national offices were cast and counted accurately (66 percent). However, 71 percent of Republicans say that voter fraud undermined the US elections.

The report also reveals potential fractures in Trump’s core white evangelical Protestant constituency. While 75 percent of high school educated white evangelicals hold a favorable opinion of Trump, just 56 percent of college-educated white evangelicals agree.

Introduction

Political coalitions are complicated and fluid, and they evolve in response to emerging issues, political leaders, and public priorities. A new survey, conducted among more than 6,000 adults living in the United States by the Survey Center on American Life, a project of the American Enterprise Institute, reveals deep fissures currently dividing the American electorate and how they crosscut and define today’s Republican and Democratic parties.

The new survey, detailed below, finds an American public torn between optimism and pessimism for the country but, perhaps surprisingly, largely maintaining faith in the ability of individuals to attain the American dream. Less surprisingly, the public expresses far less confidence in current political leaders’ ability to put the country on the right course. Instead, the public is divided, both between and within parties, on what key priorities political leaders should address.

Despite the partisan rancor so prominent in our country today, supporters of both parties declare a preference for candidates who can appeal to moderate voters rather than remain consistently liberal or conservative. Moreover, when political parties have more moderate reputations, they are generally viewed more favorably than when they are operating at the ideological extremes.

In the early days of the 2024 presidential campaign, we find the probable candidates—Joe Biden on the Democratic side and Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis on the Republican side—to be fairly evenly matched in voters’ current preferences, and we reveal key weaknesses in the coalitions they would hope to assemble to support their candidacies.

However, at least at this early stage, DeSantis appears to be the somewhat stronger Republican challenger. Biden remains a weak incumbent, but his leading opponents have their own liabilities. For example, Biden is viewed without enthusiasm among young voters, a key Democratic constituency, while Trump appears to be losing support among one of his strongest previous constituencies: white evangelicals.

Read the full report.

Read the report on the Survey Center on American Life website.