Voters who backed President Donald Trump in the 2024 election are apparently having second thoughts, according to a new poll that shows he would lose badly to Kamala Harris if the presidential contest were held today.
The NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll results were highlighted earlier this week by CNN Chief Data Correspondent Harry Enten, who noted that among voters who cast ballots in 2024, a majority say they would vote for former Vice President Harris.
The polling expert shared that in a survey from April 2025, a hypocritical rematch between Trump and Harris saw Harris winning by a point. When polled in 2026, nearly a year later, voters’ preference for Harris over Trump increased by 7 points, indicating that the 2024 Democratic nominee would beat Trump by 8 points.
“A massive shift from what we saw in November of 2024 when Donald Trump won by a point,” said Enten.
“It’s pretty remarkable to watch how rapidly the buyer’s remorse is setting in for Donald Trump,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne told theGrio. “For those in the 92% of Black women and the nearly 80% of Black men who saw through Trump, the failures of his presidency are no surprise. It was clear on Election Day 2024 that Kamala Harris was the clear choice, and it’s even clearer now, some 16 months later.”
Markus Batchelor, political director at People For the American Way, told theGrio of the new poll, “Voters are waking up, and they don’t like what they see. After a year defined by chaos and corruption, President Trump’s brand of politics is losing its grip. Unfortunately for those would-be Harris 2024 voters, the return policy doesn’t work and the receipt is long gone.”
The recent poll on a hypothetical re-do between Trump and Harris comes as the president’s approval ratings continue to plummet, largely driven by voters’ growing dissatisfaction with the economy and the administration’s immigration enforcement, which has resulted in violence against protesters and the deaths of two U.S. citizens.
A recent Ipsos poll shows 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the presidency, with an average of polls showing him having the lowest disapproval levels of any president in U.S. history. Trump’s unpopularity is particularly bad news for Republicans, who currently control both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and are running in this November’s midterm elections.
Democrats are hoping to seize on Trump’s unpopularity, which has also been driven by coverage of the FBI files on child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his ties to Trump, who is mentioned in the files more than 38,000 times.
“Americans are ready for a new vision and guardrails on Trump nonsense — and that’s a huge opportunity for Democrats heading into the midterms. If we organize, turn out, and present a clear vision focused on delivering for everyday people, we could see huge wins up and down the ballot,” said Batchelor.
In a recent interview with podcaster Know de Baraso, Harris discussed the importance of Democrats taking back power in Congress and the work she is doing to help them.
“Part of the pain the country is experiencing is because we have a President and his administration who are subverting the rule of law, who are engaged in frankly, the most callous kind of approach to humanity, and there are no checks and balances,” said the former vice president. “Why are the 2026 elections important? If we take back Congress, the House of Representatives, the Senate, then there will be checks and balances on the President’s power, which right now there are none, and we’re seeing a complete abuse of power.”
Harris, who has not ruled out running for president again in 2028, remains the most popular Democrat in polling of other potential presidential contenders. She especially remains popular among Black voters, who are necessary for any Democrat to win a general election.
In a recent interview with theGrio, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is running for U.S. Senate in Texas, said Harris remains an “influential voice” in the Democratic Party.
“She ran a historic campaign for a number of reasons, but…probably the biggest was that it was 107 days,” said Crockett, referring to the historic short amount of time Harris had to win over voters after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race for re-election. “Trying to run in a country this size in such a short amount of time is beyond a big task.”
Hinting at some of the regret voters may be having about the 2024 election, Crockett said, “We’ve all seen the memes going around, and the clips going around, where it’s like, she tried to warn y’all, and y’all didn’t listen.” She added, “I personally believe that, you know, there are those that believe that maybe it was wrong to just be sold a bag of goods and not listen to her.”
