Vice President JD Vance leads three top contenders in hypothetical matchups for the 2028 presidential election, an Emerson College poll revealed Friday.
The poll of 1,400 U.S. voters taken July 21-22 showed that Vance held narrow margins over three Democrats who are potential candidates: former Treasury Secretary Pete Buttigieg, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Vance held his slimmest margin against Buttigieg, at 43.9% to 43.1%, with 13.1% undecided. The poll showed that in 2024, 42% of respondents voted for President Donald Trump in November and 40.5% for Vice President Kamala Harris, with 15.7% saying they did not vote and 1.8% saying they voted for someone else.
Vance’s largest margin was 3.2 percentage points (45.3%-42.1%) over Newsom, with 12.5% undecided, and he had a 3-point edge (44%-41%) over Ocasio-Cortez, a steadfast progressive House Democrat, with 14.6% undecided.
“A key takeaway from the ballot tests is that about 13% of the electorate remains persuadable, while the other 87% have already settled on a party preference,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a news release.
None of the three Democrats in the poll has formally announced plans to seek the party’s 2028 presidential nomination.
Newsom earlier this month traveled to South Carolina, an early primary-voting state on the party’s calendar. Buttigieg, who won the party’s Iowa presidential caucuses in 2020 and finished a close second to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the New Hampshire primary, fueled speculation that he could run for president when he announced in March he would opt out of running statewide in Michigan, where he has lived since his time in the Biden administration.
There is speculation that Ocasio-Cortez, a darling of the party’s far left, might also be mulling a 2026 challenge to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
The poll did not include Harris, who is considering a run for California governor next year because Newsom is term-limited from seeking a third consecutive term. Nor did it included Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, or Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
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