Based on current polling, the 2024 presidential election will likely be a closely contested rematch between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump. A recent YouGov poll asked Americans how each candidate’s positions on immigration, climate change, abortion, and other issues compare to the positions of other elected members of their respective parties. For each issue, the poll asked whether Biden is more liberal, less liberal, or about the same as other elected Democrats and whether Trump is more conservative, less conservative, or about the same as other elected Republicans.
Most Americans with an opinion think that Biden and Trump hold similar positions to most elected members of their parties. Compared to Democrats and Independents, much larger shares of Republicans see Biden as more liberal than other elected Democrats; Republicans are also more likely than Democrats and Independents to see Trump as more conservative than other Republicans. Perceptions of Biden and Trump also differ by age, with 18- to 29-year-olds more likely than older Americans to think Biden is less liberal than other elected Democrats. Americans 65 and older are the age group most likely to see Biden as more liberal and Trump as more conservative than other elected members of their parties.
Regarding Biden’s policy positions on the 10 issues YouGov asked about, between 25% and 35% of U.S. adult citizens say he is more liberal than other elected Democrats, while between 8% and 13% think he is less liberal, and between 38% and 49% think he is about the same as other Democrats.
Americans are most likely to think Biden is more liberal than other Democratic officials on immigration (35%), government spending (33%), and LGBT issues (29%). Biden is seen as the least liberal on criminal justice, with just 25% of Americans saying he is more liberal than other Democrats and 13% saying he is less liberal. His stances on civil rights (49%), health care (48%), and abortion (48%) are most likely to be seen as similar to those of other elected Democrats.
For the 10 issues polled, Trump is seen as by far the most conservative on immigration, with about half (48%) of Americans saying he is more conservative than other elected Republicans on the issue and only 8% seeing him as less conservative. For the remaining issues, between 20% and 29% of Americans think Trump is more conservative than other Republicans, while between 35% and 47% think his views are similar to those of most elected Republicans.
Compared to the share of Americans who see Biden as less liberal than other Democrats, more Americans see Trump as less conservative than other elected Republicans on issues besides immigration. Americans are most likely to say Trump is less conservative than other Republican officials on abortion (20%), guns (20%), government spending (20%), and climate change (15%).
These polling results can produce Biden's and Trump’s respective net liberalism and conservatism scores for each issue – that is, how much more likely Americans are to say Biden or Trump is more liberal or conservative than other members of his party than they are to say he is less liberal or conservative than other members of his party.
Republicans are much more likely than Democrats and Independents to think Biden is more liberal than other elected Democrats. For example, while Republicans are 52 percentage points likelier to say Biden is more liberal than other Democrats on immigration than they are to say he is less liberal, Democrats are only 9 points likelier to do so. Republicans also see Biden as more liberal than other Democrats on government spending (+48), LGBT issues (+47), and taxes (+46).
While Democrats are also more likely to say Biden is more liberal than other Democrats on government spending (+12), LGBT issues (+6), and taxes (+5) than to say he is less liberal, the differences are much smaller. For guns (-1) and criminal justice (-2), Democrats are the only partisan group where the share who thinks Biden is less liberal than elected Democrats is larger than the share who thinks he is more liberal on these issues than other Democrats.
Republicans are also more likely than Democrats and Independents to say that Trump is more conservative than other elected Republicans, but the partisan gap is much smaller for Trump than it is for Biden. The largest difference occurs for government spending: Republicans are 23 points likelier to say Trump is more conservative than other Republicans than to think he is less conservative (a net conservatism score of +23), compared to net scores of -1 for Independents and -3 for Democrats.
However, for climate change and LGBT issues, Democrats (+21 and +8) are more likely than Republicans (+6 and -1) to say Trump is more conservative than other elected Republicans. On taxes and civil rights, Democrats, Independents, and Republicans are similarly likely to think Trump is more conservative than other Republicans.
Americans of different ages perceive the two candidates differently. Older Americans are more likely than younger Americans to think Biden is more liberal than other Democrats. For example, Americans 45 and older are 39 points likelier to think Biden is more liberal than other elected Democrats on LGBT issues than they are to think he is less liberal, while that difference drops to 1 point among younger adults.
Biden has much lower liberalism scores among adults under 45. For climate change (0), taxes (0), health care (0), and guns (0), younger adults are just as likely to say Biden is less liberal than other Democrats on these issues than to say he is more liberal. Biden has a negative liberalism score on criminal justice (-3) among younger adults. The liberalism scores among adults over 45 are greater than +20 for each of these issues.
Americans 45 and older are also more likely than younger adults to think Trump is more conservative than other elected Republicans. However, the differences are smaller. For example, adults under 45 are more likely to see Trump as more conservative than other Republicans on health care than they are to see him as less conservative (+6), and older adults have a slightly higher score (+14). Younger adults are about as likely to see Trump as less conservative than other Republicans on LGBT issues (-1) and abortion (-1) as they are to see him as more conservative.
See the results for this YouGov poll
Methodology: The YouGov poll was conducted online on September 26 - 30, 2023 among 1,000 U.S. adult citizens. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel using sample matching. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2019 American Community Survey. For both polls, the sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. The sample also was weighted by baseline party identification, which is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to November 1, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democratic, 31% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 4%.
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