2028 Presidential poll: Who’s leading Democrats?

Who will Democrats look to in 2028 now that the dust has settled between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump?
The latest polling has the outgoing vice president in the lead. According to Echelon insights, current standings are:
Vice President Kamala Harris — 41%
California Gov. Gavin Newsom — 8%
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — 7%
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — 6%
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — 6%
Democrats spent billions of dollars warning American voters that Trump posed an imminent threat to democracy, that his economic policies would benefit only his wealthy friends and that he was literally a fascist.
In the end, voters didn’t care — or if they did, it didn’t matter.
And now, after Harris’ decisive loss, Democrats enter a second Trump presidency with no clear leader, no clear plan and no agreement on what caused them to be so wrong about the 2024 election.
“I think there needs to be a cleaning of the house, there needs to be a new generation of leaders that emerge,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., among the few Democrats with presidential ambitions to address the party’s future on Wednesday. “There needs to be new thinking, new ideas and a new direction. And, you know, the establishment produced a disaster.”
Early polling on who Democrats will look to in 2028 is more indicative of name ID than who will actually lead the party.
Most of the elected Democrats who are most often mentioned as 2028 presidential prospects — including the governors of California, Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania — declined to weigh in when asked. Others canceled scheduled interviews.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Matt Arco may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.