Most Americans say Joe Biden won’t run again in 2024

Voters fear the pandemic, inflation and the showdown with Russia over Ukraine are taking their toll on America’s oldest president.

Joe Biden at the White House on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

More than half of Americans do not believe that President Joe Biden will seek re-election in 2024, a poll has found.

Voters fear that the Covid-19 pandemic, spiralling inflation and the showdown with Russia over Ukraine are taking their toll on America’s oldest president, despite his insistence that he will run again for the White House.

The survey by The Wall Street Journal found 52 per cent of Americans no longer believed that Mr Biden would seek a second term. Only 29 per cent believed that he would stand again while 19 per cent were undecided.

Mr Biden, 79, has said that he is determined to stand again, setting up a likely rematch with Donald Trump, as the former president continues to hint that he will seek to avenge his defeat.

White House insiders have said that Mr Biden believes he is the only candidate who can beat Trump. The latest poll will revive speculation among Democrats about who might replace him if he steps aside.

Even his supporters among those surveyed and people interviewed in battleground states cited Mr Biden’s age as a problem.

If he were re-elected, Mr Biden would be 82 at the swearing-in ceremony, almost a decade older than Ronald Reagan when he began his second term at 73.

Mr Trump will be 77 at the next election.

Republican opponents and the right-wing press have pounced on every stumbled word as evidence that Biden has undergone a serious decline.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist, pro-Trump Republican member for Georgia, denounced him this month as a “mentally incompetent, feckless, dementia-ridden piece of crap”.

White House officials insist that the president is a forceful presence behind the scenes.

A senior official said: “In meetings, he’s really tough. Obama was hard on people when he was president but it’s nothing like Biden is now.”

Insiders have indicated that Biden will decide on his future after the mid-term elections in November.

Riven by infighting over the stalled domestic agenda and battered by inflation, Democrats fear a wipe-out at the polls.

Republicans are confident of winning the few seats they need to regain control of both houses of congress, leaving the president as a lame duck.

Mr Biden’s approval rating has risen since his state of the union address two weeks ago, buoyed by hope of an end to the pandemic and the White House’s handling of the crisis in Ukraine.

An aggregate of Mr Biden’s polling puts his approval rating at 42.9 per cent.

The bipartisan consensus is already beginning to unravel, however, as the ban on Russian oil imports drives petrol prices to their highest since 2008.

Republicans and the right-wing press, which pilloried Mr Biden for his reluctance to sanction Russia, have switched their attacks to the impact of sanctions.

Even among Democrats, there is ambivalence about whether Mr Biden should run again. Among those polled only 43 per cent wanted him to do so.

The uncertainty is magnified by doubts about who might replace him.

Approval ratings for Kamala Harris, the vice-president, are even worse than those for Mr Biden.

The Times