The 2024 presidential election is barely in the rearview mirror, and yet, at least one polling organization decided to sound out a small sample of voters on their preferred 2028 White House candidates. Why conduct a 2028 presidential poll in November of 2024? One can only speculate. Maybe a rudimentary social experiment to find out whether Kamala Harris’s campaign, which crashed and burned so spectacularly on Nov. 5, could rise from the ashes in four years.
A first glance at the results of this survey, conducted by Echelon Insights between November 14 and 18 and sampling 1,010 likely voters, indicates that the VP may be in good shape as a 2028 presidential candidate. A second glance, however, tells a different story.
Some context should be added here, though, for the sake of accuracy and to be fair to Echelon Insights. The insignificance of this poll only applies to the one question about 2028 presidential candidates. Beyond that, the wide-ranging 73-question study Is worthy of attention. It is also only fair to point out that the poll did not oversample either Democrats or Republicans – but perhaps undersampled independent voters.
2028 Presidential Poll Unplugged
Question nine of the survey asks, “If the 2028 Democratic presidential primary were being held today, for whom would you vote?” This question was only asked of those respondents who identified as Democrats. Forty-one percent tapped Kamala Harris. It’s as if 2024 never happened. The gap between the number of respondents who chose the outgoing (in more ways than one) VP and the second most popular choice was staggering. California Governor Gavin Newsom was favored by 8% of those who answered the question. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro took a 7% share.
It's worth noting that the survey takers had a choice of 14 potentials, plus options for “someone else” and “unsure,” an answer that attracted 16% of those who answered the question. The two points to note, here, are that the unsure likely voters considerably outnumbered those who selected anybody except Harris. Also, 59% of respondents to this question did not select Harris as their preferred 2028 candidate.
Question 10 was the same for Republicans. Incoming Vice President JD Vance came in at 37%, with Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley at 9% and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at 8%. If, just for argument’s sake, one was to consider this a legitimate 2028 presidential poll, JD Vance may be in worse shape than Kamala Harris, among their respective voter bases. But debating whether that is accurate and, if so, why may be an endeavor without an expectation.
One cannot criticize Echelon Insights for their diligence, even though the survey took in only a relatively small sample of likely voters. However, the organization clearly did not read the memo from Trump's opponents, who have reliably informed the American people that, now Trump is returning to the White House, there will never be another election because he has no intention of leaving office. Polling voters on their choices for future presidents is, therefore, a complete waste of time, apparently.
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