The ‘lesser of two evils’ voters who could decide 2024

President Joe Biden’s path to victory in 2024 runs through voters who think he’s been a disappointment in the White House — but say Donald Trump or another Republican would be even worse.

Biden’s approval rating stands at 43% in the latest NBC News national poll, not enough support to translate to a re-election win. But another 10% of registered voters say they only “somewhat disapprove” of Biden’s performance. And in a hypothetical rematch with Trump, half of those voters say they would support Biden, while 39% say they would back Trump. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis fares better with those voters, but he only fights Biden to a draw.

The poll’s margin of error for this subsample of voters is a wide plus-or-minus 10 points — yet even within that gaping range, the result highlights deeply unusual behavior of a voter group that typically breaks hard against the president’s party in elections, according to national exit polls.

But in the recent 2022 midterms, when voters who “somewhat disapprove” of Biden made up about 10% of the electorate, according to NBC News exit polling, they supported Democrats by a 4-point margin. That helped Democrats limit their House losses and even expand their Senate majority in Biden’s first midterm.

The data show how concerns about Republican candidates and the GOP broadly kept Democrats competitive in the last election and are keeping Biden competitive in the next one, even though voters harbor their own concerns about him. That’s backed up by poll respondents’ own words when they were asked to describe why they would choose Biden over Trump or DeSantis.

“Donald Trump is nuts,” said a self-described white, female, moderate respondent from Pennsylvania, who said she’d choose Biden despite somewhat disapproving of his performance.

A Black male voter from New Mexico who is an independent said: “Donald Trump lacks moral compass. Joe Biden somewhat has a moral compass. That was it.”

A female Hispanic liberal from Florida said about choosing Biden over DeSantis, “I would rather vote for a dead shark than the devil himself, I suppose.” Other voters described DeSantis as “extreme” or “far right,” especially on LGBTQ issues.