If the 2026 midterms were an opportunity for voters to express their feelings about President Donald Trump’s administration, the election in two years will be their first opportunity to cast a vote for president without his name on the ballot.
Trump is constitutionally barred from running again, which means, as the lame duck portion of his presidency comes into view, it’s not too early to start thinking about who might replace him.
Potential candidates certainly are. While they might bat away speculation, many are starting to think seriously about their potential path or wrestling with the ultimate question — is it worth the investment of time and energy and the guarantee of being vilified by your political rivals in the off chance that you could be the most powerful person in the world?
A little more than half of Americans, 54%, have given at least some thought to the coming presidential race, according to a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS in the month before the midterm election. Fewer, 40%, said they’re looking forward to it, with 27% saying they’re dreading it and the rest expressing neither outlook.
No major candidate has yet declared a campaign, although the first of those could come sooner than many people think.
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About a third of Americans, 35%, said there’s a specific candidate they’d like to see run, compared to 64% who are taking more of a wait-and-see attitude.
The two Republican politicians whose names were most frequently mentioned were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at 8%, and Vice President JD Vance at 7%. President Donald Trump has joked about the two men being rivals or even forming a ticket together. Rubio has said he would defer to Vance.
Among Democratic politicians, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (3%), former Vice President and Democrats’ 2024 nominee Kamala Harris (2%), and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (2%) were the only potential candidates to get the attention of more than 1% of Americans in the poll.
Things changed when Americans were asked by pollsters about specific candidates.
About a quarter of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they would be excited to support Harris (27%), Rep, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (27%), and Buttigieg (26%). Slightly fewer (22%) said they would be excited to support Newsom or Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and 16% expressed excitement about Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia.
The poll was conducted before the midterms, however, and Ossoff has clearly generated some buzz. He won the straw poll at a conference for Democratic activists, Crooked Con, held the weekend after Ossoff’s commanding reelection in Georgia. He has said he has no interest in running for president.
Harris has the most total support. More than three-quarters of Democrats and Democratic leaners (51%) said that they would at least consider backing her. But she is also the most well-known of the candidates. Just 7% said they didn’t know enough about her to offer an opinion, compared with 55% who said the same of Ossoff. Harris also had the highest portion of Democratic-aligned adults, 15%, who said they would never support her.
More than 60% said they didn’t know enough about some other potential candidates, including Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, all of whom have been mentioned as potential candidates.
Midterms could also have buoyed someone like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who handily won reelection and also helped flip multiple house seats to Democrats in his swing state. In CNN’s poll, just 10% said they’d be excited to support him, 28% said they’d consider it, and 54% said they didn’t have enough information.
Vance and Rubio get similar marks from Republicans and Republican leaners: 41% said they would be excited to support Vance and 41% said they would be excited to support Rubio. Vance, however, may have a wider pool of potential support, with 77% of GOP-aligned adults saying they’d at least consider supporting him, compared with 65% who said the same of Rubio.
The midterms could affect those numbers. Vance has sought some distance from Trump on the issue of the Iran war, which he blames for Republican losses. While as Vice President, Vance has largely been viewed as Trump’s heir apparent, in a post-election interview with CBS News, Trump said he might not support anyone in the coming Republican primary.
“Maybe I’m better off not getting involved,” Trump said.
There are a number of potential candidates who generate opposition on the GOP side. Nearly half of Republicans or Republican-leaners, 46%, said they would never support former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and 30% said they would never support former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Both Christie and Haley have been critics of Trump and run against him in previous primaries. A substantial block also said they would not support Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (25%), HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (27%), or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky (24%).
The election is a little less than two years away. So while it’s worth looking at the potential field, it’s also worth acknowledging that things could change.
In 2014, two years before Trump went on to win the White House for the first time he wasn’t included when CNN asked Americans about potential candidates. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, however, was the top listed Democrat. She would go on to get the nomination.
In 2018, two years before Joe Biden went on to become president, he had the most support among Democrats but was far short of a majority.
In 2022, two years before Trump won reelection, a slim majority of Republicans and Republican leaners wanted someone who wasn’t named Trump. He ended up with the nomination and the White House.
But the Trump era is coming to an end, and the coming presidential election will be the most open on both sides of the political aisle since 2008.
The CNN poll was conducted by SSRS from October 15-18 among a random national sample of 1,701 US adults drawn from a probability-based panel. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
