| 2024 vote by 2020 vote | |||||
| Among registered voters | |||||
| 2020 vote | 2024 Vote choice | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Donald Trump | Joe Biden | Someone else | Wouldn't vote | n | |
| Donald Trump | 91 | 2 | 7 | 1 | 974 |
| Joe Biden | 5 | 81 | 11 | 3 | 1,094 |
| Someone else | 23 | 15 | 56 | 6 | 95 |
| Marquette Law School Poll, national surveys, pooling Sept. & Nov. 2023 and Feb. 2024 | |||||
| Question: If the 2024 election for president were held today between Former President Donald Trump, the Republican, and President Joe Biden, the Democrat, would you vote for Donald Trump or for Joe Biden? | |||||
| Question: Which presidential candidate did you vote for in 2020? | |||||
2020 Voters and the 2024 Election
Marquette Law School Polls
How 2020 voters are choosing in 2024
This report examines how 2020 voters are considering voting in 2024. How many Trump and Biden 2020 voters are standing pat and how many are changing their choices?
The data are for registered voters nationally in Marquette Law School Polls.
The latest survey was conducted Feb. 5-15, 2024, interviewing 882 registered voters nationwide, with a margin of error of +/-4.5 percentage points. Full results, including toplines, crosstabs, survey instrument and methodology report, are available at the MULawPoll website
The analysis below pools the September and November 2023 polls and the February 2024 poll. This provides a substantial number of respondents and smooths out month to month variation. The combined polling reported here consists of 2606 registered voters nationwide. The reported 2020 vote is 41% for Trump, 47% for Biden, 4% for someone else and 8% did not vote in 2020. Among those who did vote in 2020, the pooled survey finds 45% for Trump, 51% for Biden and 4% for someone else.
The popular vote in 2020 was 46.8% for Trump, 51.2% for Biden and 2% for others.
For the 2020 vote recall we ask:
Which presidential candidate did you vote for in 2020?
For the 2024 vote intention we ask
If the 2024 election for president were held today between Former President Donald Trump, the Republican, and President Joe Biden, the Democrat, would you vote for Donald Trump or for Joe Biden?
Response options include “someone else” and “would not vote.”
Those who initially say someone else or would not vote are asked
If you had to choose, would you vote for Biden or for Trump?
Combining these questions gives the “leaned” vote in which almost everyone expresses a choice, while the first, “unleaned” question gives a measure of reluctance to choose either Trump or Biden.
Vote for Biden or Trump by 2020 vote
Unleaned 2024 vote
Table 1 and Figure 1 show the 2024 vote by the 2020 reported vote. Trump holds 91% of his 2020 voters while Biden retains 81% of his past supporters. Two-percent of Trump 2020 voters switch to Biden while 7% say someone else and 1% wouldn’t vote. Past Biden voters go 5% to Trump and 11% to someone else, with 3% saying they wouldn’t vote.
On retention of past support, Trump has a 10 percentage point advantage over Biden.
A majority of the modest number of 2020 third party voters, 56%, say they will also vote for a third party candidate in 2024, with 23% moving to Trump and 15% moving to Biden, with 6% saying they won’t vote this year.
Leaned 2024 vote
When asked “if you had to choose”, Biden picks up some support, but still trails Trump in past supporter loyalty, as shown in Table 2 and Figure 2.
This leaned vote shows that reluctant voters, those saying someone else or won’t vote, largely move back to their previous vote choice if urged to choose. Trump holds 97% of past supporters and Biden holds 92%. The crossover from Biden to Trump is 8%, while from Trump to Biden it is 3%.
| 2024 leaned vote by 2020 vote | |||
| Among registered voters | |||
| 2020 vote | 2024 Vote choice, leaned | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Donald Trump | Joe Biden | n | |
| Donald Trump | 97 | 3 | 974 |
| Joe Biden | 8 | 92 | 1,094 |
| Marquette Law School Poll, national surveys, pooling Sept. & Nov. 2023 and Feb. 2024 | |||
| Question: If the 2024 election for president were held today between Former President Donald Trump, the Republican, and President Joe Biden, the Democrat, would you vote for Donald Trump or for Joe Biden? | |||
| Question: If you had to choose, would you vote for Biden or for Trump? | |||
| Question: Which presidential candidate did you vote for in 2020? | |||
Polling by month
The above analysis has aggregated the last three Marquette Law School polls in order to increase sample size and reduce month-to-month variation. Here I show the results for each poll so that the modest changes across polls can be seen. Table 3 shows the results for the unleaned 2024 vote choice by individual survey.
The stability in month-to-month polling justifies the pooled analysis above, which provides larger sample sizes while not masking substantial trends over time.
Retained support has been quite stable across the three surveys, with a small gain in loyalty for Biden, from 79% in Sept. to 83% in Feb., while Trump’s voters have remained at 90 or 91% loyalty rates.
| 2024 vote by 2020 vote by month | |||||
| Among registered voters | |||||
| 2020 vote | 2024 Vote choice | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Donald Trump | Joe Biden | Someone else | Wouldn't vote | n | |
| 2/5-15/24 | |||||
| Donald Trump | 91 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 344 |
| Joe Biden | 4 | 83 | 7 | 5 | 379 |
| Someone else | 37 | 7 | 55 | 2 | 14 |
| 11/2-7/23 | |||||
| Donald Trump | 91 | 1 | 8 | 0 | 314 |
| Joe Biden | 5 | 81 | 13 | 1 | 352 |
| Someone else | 14 | 10 | 69 | 7 | 44 |
| 9/18-25/23 | |||||
| Donald Trump | 90 | 2 | 6 | 2 | 316 |
| Joe Biden | 5 | 79 | 13 | 3 | 364 |
| Someone else | 29 | 25 | 41 | 5 | 37 |
| Marquette Law School Poll, national surveys, latest: Feb. 5-15, 2024 | |||||
| Question: If the 2024 election for president were held today between Former President Donald Trump, the Republican, and President Joe Biden, the Democrat, would you vote for Donald Trump or for Joe Biden? | |||||
| Question: Which presidential candidate did you vote for in 2020? | |||||
Table 4 shows the leaned 2024 vote results by 2020 vote for each survey. There has been little change across the three polls, with Trump holding 96-98% loyalty and Biden 92-93%.
| 2024 leaned vote by 2020 vote by month | |||
| Among registered voters | |||
| 2020 vote | 2024 Vote choice, leaned | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Donald Trump | Joe Biden | n | |
| 2/5-15/24 | |||
| Donald Trump | 96 | 4 | 344 |
| Joe Biden | 8 | 92 | 379 |
| Someone else | 63 | 37 | 14 |
| 11/2-7/23 | |||
| Donald Trump | 98 | 2 | 314 |
| Joe Biden | 7 | 93 | 352 |
| Someone else | 66 | 34 | 44 |
| 9/18-25/23 | |||
| Donald Trump | 98 | 2 | 316 |
| Joe Biden | 8 | 92 | 364 |
| Someone else | 54 | 45 | 37 |
| Marquette Law School Poll, national surveys, latest: Feb. 5-15, 2024 | |||
| Question: If the 2024 election for president were held today between Former President Donald Trump, the Republican, and President Joe Biden, the Democrat, would you vote for Donald Trump or for Joe Biden? | |||
| Question: If you had to choose, would you vote for Biden or for Trump? | |||
| Question: Which presidential candidate did you vote for in 2020? | |||