2028 Presidential Race Poll: Vance, Rubio, Ossoff and Buttigieg Lead the Early 2028 Field in a New Reuters/Ipsos Survey
A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Monday finds four names leading the earliest read on the 2028 presidential race - Republicans JD Vance and Marco Rubio and Democrats Jon Ossoff and Pete Buttigieg - with none of the four yet formally in the race and both parties split over how much to break with, or go after, President Donald Trump.
The 2028 presidential race has its first full scorecard. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Thursday finds that four potential contenders have caught voters' attention with their early jockeying: Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Republican side, and Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on the Democratic side, Reuters reported. None of the four has formally launched a campaign, and the nominating contests are more than a year away.
Among Republicans, 45 percent of the party's voters polled rated Rubio an "excellent" presidential candidate and 43 percent said the same of Vance, Reuters reported. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis followed at 32 percent, while others in the conversation, including Donald Trump Jr. and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, drew both fans and many detractors. President Trump, who has quizzed allies on whether they prefer Vance or Rubio, said in a Sunday interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" that he would "not necessarily" make an endorsement in the Republican primary, according to Reuters.
Among Democrats, Ossoff and Buttigieg each drew the "excellent" rating from 29 percent of the party's voters. Reuters reported that Ossoff has drawn headlines calling Trump corrupt and unfit for office in unusually direct language, and that he won re-election last week by 18 percentage points in Georgia, a state Trump carried by 2 points in 2024. Former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Governor Gavin Newsom each drew 23 percent, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew 15 percent. Name recognition still varies widely: about one in five Democrats said they had never heard of Buttigieg, compared with roughly one in three for Ossoff, while about one in six Republicans said they did not know who Rubio is.
The poll surveyed 1,705 U.S. adults nationwide, including roughly 500 registered voters from each party, was completed on Monday, and carries a margin of error of 5 percentage points for Republican and Democratic voters, Reuters reported. Democratic strategist Elaine Kamarck cautioned against reading too deeply into views this far out: "It's a world away," she told Reuters. The survey also found both parties divided over Trump himself - Republicans over whether they want a candidate who breaks with him or follows in his footsteps, and Democrats, riding high after routing Republicans in the November 3 congressional elections, over how aggressively to go after the president, including through impeachment.
