US President Joe Biden filed paperwork on Wednesday to appear on Nevada’s Democratic Party primary ballot next year, making official his candidacy in the 2024 US presidential election.
The Democratic Party holds 57 nominating contests to choose its candidate for president every four years: one for each state plus contests in Washington, DC, five US territories, and a poll of Democrats living abroad. Nevada’s October 16 filing deadline is the first of the 57 contests.
Although some have questioned the wisdom of Biden’s candidacy at the age of 80, he has faced little formal challenge within his party. Robert F Kennedy Jr., perhaps the biggest potential threat to Biden’s re-nomination, announced he would run as an independent earlier this week after polling at only around 15% support within the Democratic Party. Author Marianne Williamson, who is running as a Democrat, has typically polled at 10% or less.
The Democratic Party hasn’t seen a major internal challenge to a sitting president since Ted Kennedy’s abortive run against Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Meanwhile, new general election polling from Nevada shows a tight race in the Silver State with Biden and former US President Donald Trump at 46% and 45% support, respectively. Some 7% of voters polled said they were undecided.
Nevada is traditionally a swing state; Democrats have won it in every election since 2008, but with increasingly narrow margins each time. In 2020, the vote count in the state appeared to be headed towards a contentious, drawn-out process as in neighboring Arizona before Biden ultimately won with 50.1% of the vote.
In a potentially ominous sign for Biden’s performance next year, 55% of Biden supporters in Nevada said they were backing him primarily in order to beat Trump. Only 44% of Biden’s supporters claimed they were motivated mainly by support of the candidate himself. Sixty-three percent of Trump backers in the poll said they would vote for Trump out of love for the former president.
Trump stomped his Republican primary opponents in the poll, leading his closest rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 65%-13%. No other Republican candidate registered above mid single-digit support.
Fifty-five percent of likely Republican voters polled said the economy was the main issue driving their support for their preferred candidate in their party’s primary. Some 19% said they were motivated primarily by the issue of immigration, while 11% claimed they most cared about “voting rights and election integrity.”