After a dumpster fire of an election season for Democrats in 2024 — losing the presidency, the House, and the Senate — conversations about who will emerge from the pack to challenge Republicans for the White House in 2028 have already begun.
Kamala Harris, the former vice president, and the unduly anointed 2024 Democrat presidential nominee, currently stands apart as the 2028 frontrunner. Even after President Donald Trump overwhelmed Harris this past November, multiple polls are reporting that she would lead the liberal pack should she decide to run again in 2028.
According to an Echelon Insights poll of 447 likely voters out earlier this month, the former vice president received 36 percent support in a prospective field of 18 candidates, by far the top vote-getter. Former Transportation Secretary and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg came in a distant second at 10 percent, followed by Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (9 percent), California Governor Gavin Newsom (6 percent), and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (5 percent).
Two other polls from J.L. Partners and McLaughlin & Associates found similar results, with Harris leading the field at 30 percent and 35 percent, respectively. Both polls also had Buttigieg in second with less than 10 percent support.
These numbers are significantly higher than any primary support Harris received in the past. According to Real Clear Polling, Harris’s peak during the 2020 primary was 5.5 percent in November 2019 – just one month before she dropped out of the race entirely following a dramatic collapse in support. Despite the fact that, as NPR reported, Harris was initially “among the top tier of candidates in both polling and fundraising,” she withdrew two months before the Iowa caucuses.
Harris’s 2024 bid for the presidency was even more disastrous. Her $1 billion, 107-day campaign — the shortest in history — was a total failure. She lost every swing state to Donald Trump and, perhaps even more embarrassingly, performed worse than Biden in every state that both she and Biden won. Democrat voters made clear that they had no interest in Harris in 2020, and the American people seconded that notion in 2024.
That Harris is still the clear frontrunner to be the Democrats’ nominee in 2028 should thus be setting off alarm bells within the Democrat Party apparatus, both about the party’s unwillingness to change course and about its lack of political talent to draw on in the years ahead.
Of course, Harris may decide that she has had enough of the national political spotlight and stick to her home state of California, where she has had far more electoral success. Speculation is already swirling about a gubernatorial campaign in the Golden State to fill the seat of Governor Gavin Newsom, who is term-limited. Harris is currently a front-runner in that race as well, with almost 60 percent support in a hypothetical primary.
Should Harris decide to run for governor, it would theoretically leave Buttigieg as the “favorite” for the presidential ticket – although with less than 10 percent support, it would still be anyone’s ballgame. Buttigieg did last longer than Harris in the 2020 Democrat primary, earning 26 delegates before the abrupt end to his campaign following the 2020 South Carolina primary.
But his tenure as Secretary of Transportation, particularly his lackluster response to the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, leaves plenty of reason for voters to doubt his ability to serve as president.
The candidate with perhaps the most room to rise is Gavin Newsom. As Biden faltered last summer following his debate debacle against Trump, some media reports suggested that Newsom was angling behind the scenes to box out Kamala Harris to secure the nomination for himself, or at least to force a contested primary.
Newsom ultimately denied those rumors and threw his support behind Harris, but it’s no secret that the California governor has his eye on the Oval Office. With plenty of connections to wealthy California donors and a relatively weak primary field, Newsom likely sees plenty of opportunity for himself in 2028. As the leader of the nation’s largest state, he is one of the most recognizable state-level politicians in the country.
Another possible scenario, however, is that the Democrats’ 2028 nominee is not even on the radar of political analysts. 10 percent of likely voters in the Echelon Insights poll said they were unsure whom they would vote for if the Democrat primary was held today.
It’s worth noting that in February of 2005, Barack Obama was just getting settled into his office as a first-term senator from Illinois. In February of 2013, Donald Trump was still focused on growing his business and real estate empire. Few could have imagined more than three years before a presidential election that either man would be on his way to the Oval Office.
Nonetheless, Democrats have some big leadership questions to answer in the months ahead. The 2024 election was a lesson in the perils of nominating a far-left candidate — one that, if these polls are any indication, Democrats have not yet seemed to learn.
Kamden Mulder is a senior at Hillsdale College pursuing a degree in American Studies and Journalism. You can follow her on X @kamdenmulder_.
