Poll: If Joe Biden stood aside, who would voters want to run in his place?

President Joe Biden has been victorious in the primary elections across the country — including Utah — but his approval rating continues to languish at record lows.

Only 38% of Americans approve of his job performance, according to Gallup, a low not seen since President Jimmy Carter was in office. Voters are frustrated with his handling of immigration, and they’re worried about his age and fitness for office.

He also has received some blowback at the ballot box, particularly from Arab Americans and progressives who are angry at his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Biden lost more than 13%, or 88,000, of the vote to “uncommitted” voters in Michigan, while more than 168,000 voters in Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, Alabama, Tennessee and Iowa also marked “no presence” or “uncommitted” on their ballot.

Still, after Super Tuesday, it’s clear Biden will be the Democratic nominee and former President Donald Trump the Republican nominee, even though most Americans don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch.

But the question is, if, for some reason, Biden were to step aside in favor of a different Democratic candidate, is there an obvious second choice? In the latest Harris X/Deseret News national poll, voters responded to a hypothetical question — if Biden doesn’t run again, who would they pick instead?

Former first lady Michelle Obama was one of the top choices in the survey, with 13% support across the board, and 19% among Democrats.

The poll was conducted Feb. 26-27 among 1,007 registered voters, with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points. The sample of self-described Democrat voters was 339.

But Obama has, time and again, said she doesn’t have an interest in running for the White House.

The former first lady’s office recently told NBC News she “will not be running for president,” and will support “Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ re-election campaign.”

Sources said while she plans to aid the Biden campaign, Obama isn’t interested in returning to political life full time.

“I’ve never expressed any interest in politics. Ever,” she admitted in her Netflix documentary, “The Light We Carry: Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey.”

“I mean, I agreed to support my husband. He wanted to do it, and he was great at it. But at no point have I ever said, ‘I think I want to run.’ Ever,” she said.

“Politics is hard,” the former first lady added. “It’s just like marriage, it’s just like kids — you’ve got to want it. It’s got to be in your soul because it is so important.”

As Mackey Smith, a political strategist with consulting group Sugarhouse Strategies, said, Americans who hope Obama will jump in the race is reminiscent of Republicans looking to “find the next iteration of” President Ronald Reagan. For Democrats, she taps into a sense of nostalgia for the Obama presidency, he added.

While garnering the same percentage of support among all voters as Obama, Harris performed better among Democrats with 21%. But it’s tough to overlook her approval ratings, which have been steadily declining since she took office, partly because she was made the face of the thorny southern border issue.

House Speaker Emerita Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., defended Harris in a September appearance on CNN, saying she doesn’t “think people give her enough credit.”

“People say to me, ‘Why isn’t she doing this or that?’ I say because she is the vice president, that’s the job description. You don’t do that much,” Pelosi said.

In recent months, Harris has ramped up efforts to engage with the Biden reelection campaign, stepping into the spotlight and saying she is “ready to serve,” while brushing off concerns about the president’s age.

But even though she earns the highest support from Democrats in the HarrisX/Deseret News poll, Smith said for a Democratic nominee replacement, the “party bosses might skip her” due to her low favorability numbers.

To him, the only other politician the party “could potentially bypass (Harris) for would be Gavin Newsom.” Smith noted Newsom’s “dress rehearsal version of a presidential campaign” with his appearances on Fox News — including a televised debate with former Republican presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — and international trips to China and Israel. He hit the campaign trail for Biden, traveling to South Carolina and Nevada in January.

In 2022, the California governor rented out billboards in red states to call out conservative policies on guns and abortion, which fueled his budding national name recognition. At the same time, he denies any intention of running for president in 2024.

“He’s basically saying, ‘If (Biden) can’t go, I’m in the wings ready and able to jump in,’” said Smith.

Newsom is also trying to reposition his brand to become the “voice of common sense,” stepping away from progressivism, Smith said, adding, “Anyone in California knows that Newsom is a true liberal. But I think he’s going to try to market himself to the Midwest ... to win.”

“Now, you can’t have Kamala and Gavin on the ticket together,” he said. “One of them would have to change their residency because the Constitution doesn’t allow the president and vice president to be from the same state.”

He added he doesn’t see either of them leaving California, nor does he see Democrats embracing a Harris-Newsom ticket for their 2024 playbook.

Plus, by “kicking Kamala to the curb, Democrats would be abandoning the strategy that won them the White House four years ago,” referring to the higher voter turnout among African American and women voters.

The political consultant doesn’t see former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton coming back either, “because I don’t think the party bosses would want to risk losing.”

With 8% support from Democratic voters and 6% from all voters, Clinton is still relevant.

She retreated away from political life, busying herself with writing projects and the Clinton Foundation, following her defeat to Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

“There’s a wing of people who feel like she should have won,” said Smith. But, it’s “not the rank-and-file feeling anymore.”

New York Magazine recently reported Clinton’s comeback to politics. She isn’t involved in any policymaking but is actively coalescing friends and political allies around the Biden-Harris ticket. She has also evolved to become a mentor to Harris. Working mostly behind the scenes for now, Clinton hasn’t shown an interest in taking on a leading role in the campaign or running for the White House.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., garnered numbers identical to Clinton. He, too, like many others on this list, has been crystal clear about not running for president again. But he is contemplating running for reelection to the Senate.

At 82, he is the second oldest senator in office, but he still manages to command a room, and even scold his colleagues when necessary, as seen during a November hearing when he yelled at two senators engaged in a confrontation to respect the decorum of the Senate.

Sanders has ruled out a third-party run, consistently throwing all his support behind Biden. He even offered Biden, his one-time rival for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, some advice, like focusing on the economy and big pharma — issues that he believes deeply resonate with Americans.

Only 3% of all voters and 4% of Democrats backed Rep. Dean Phillips, who failed to win a primary contest against Biden and dropped out of the presidential race on Wednesday morning, a day after Super Tuesday primaries.

Leading up to the primary, Phillips had been largely ignored by the Democratic Party. Smith said they took “a page out of what the Republicans did in 2020,” where Trump didn’t face competition for the Republican nomination and kept his eyes laser focused on the general election.

“If Biden were to clear out, the fact that Dean Phillips has been in the race the longest wouldn’t help him at all,” especially since he polled in single digits, said Smith.

Democrats in the survey also threw single-digit support behind Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, 5%; Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, 4%; Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, 3%; Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, 3%; Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, 3%; Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, 2%; Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, 2%; and Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, 2%.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore received less than 1%. Roughly 35% of all voters and 13% of Democrats responded they didn’t know who should be the nominee if Biden bowed out, while 2% of all voters said someone else.