Democrats still have significant disagreements about their party’s future direction, even as more of them want the party to move to the center than the left, according to a poll from The New York Times and Siena University. The party’s voters also had no consensus on who their 2028 presidential nominee should be.
Republicans, on the other, hand, want their party to follow President Trump’s lead in 2028 and say they prefer Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio to be their next presidential nominee.
The poll shows that while a meaningful slice of Republicans would like to change direction from Mr. Trump, the party remains much more united than Democrats. Still, Republicans face a generational divide, with far more older voters wanting to stick with the Trump path than their younger compatriots.
Both parties are days away from a midterm election that is likely to serve as an inflection point.
Democrats hope that a backlash to Mr. Trump’s policies will power them to victories deep in parts of the country where Republicans have long prevailed. Republicans, for whom Mr. Trump has been the dominant figure for a decade, are betting on his ability to turn out the party’s base. The president himself has urged Republican voters to pretend he is on the ballot.
Mr. Trump’s lasting grip on his party is clear in the poll: When asked an open-ended question about whom they wanted to be the next G.O.P. presidential nominee, 8 percent of Republicans named him, even though he is constitutionally ineligible.
Harris, Newsom or … no clue.
Democrats had no consensus in the poll about whom they would be most likely to vote for in a presidential primary race.
Those surveyed named more than 20 Democrats — including former President Barack Obama and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City, who are both ineligible — as their top choice.
Nearly half of potential Democratic primary voters said they did not know whom they wanted to support for president.
The question asked respondents to volunteer their choice of candidate, rather than providing a list of names. With more than two years until the 2028 election, it can be difficult for people to come up with the names of potential contenders.
Still, the party faces a broader fight over its direction as the midterms conclude and the 2028 presidential race takes shape. About 48 percent of Democrats wanted to see the party move toward the political center, compared with 27 percent who thought it should go to the left. About 21 percent of Democrats said the party should stay where it is.
The chasm is wider among independent voters, whom both parties need to win national elections. Of those, 72 percent thought the Democratic Party should move to the center, compared with just 11 percent who wanted it to shift left.
Younger Democrats are more inclined to want the party to move left, while their elders want to see it move to the middle.
When Democrats were asked in the poll whom they would be most likely to vote for in the 2028 primary race, no candidate received more than 12 percent support.
Two of the best-known potential candidates, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, topped the list with 12 percent and 9 percent, respectively. They were followed by some of the party’s other prominent figures: former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (7 percent), Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York (6 percent) and Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia (4 percent).
No major Democratic candidate has announced a presidential campaign yet, though several potential contenders, including Mr. Newsom, Ms. Harris and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, have publicly deliberated about the possibility. Mr. Buttigieg has traveled the country stumping for Democratic candidates in the midterms. Mr. Ossoff, who is running for re-election, said during a debate last week that he would serve his full six-year Senate term if re-elected and declared that he had “zero interest in running for president.” (Mr. Obama said similar in 2006.)
Fifteen other Democrats were named by at least two poll respondents as preferred 2028 options. Some of these figures are highly unlikely or ineligible to run, including Mr. Obama; Michelle Obama; Mr. Mamdani (he is ineligible to be president because he was born overseas); Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is 85 and has said he does not expect to run again; and Hillary Clinton, the party’s presidential nominee in 2016.
Vance, Rubio or … Trump again.
Mr. Vance has widely been seen as the most likely heir to Mr. Trump’s political movement since they won the 2024 election together.
The Times/Siena poll indicates that potential Republican primary voters tend to feel that way, too: Thirty-three percent said they would most likely vote for Mr. Vance in a Republican primary, compared with 23 percent for Mr. Rubio, who has said he will defer to Mr. Vance.
A large majority of Republicans in the poll, 63 percent, said they wanted a continuation of Mr. Trump’s policies. Eight percent went so far as to say that he was their first choice for 2028, even though he cannot run because of term limits.
Eleven other Republicans were named by at least two poll respondents. They included Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida (3 percent), Donald Trump Jr. (1 percent) and Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee, who broke with Mr. Trump long ago.
The poll suggested that it would be challenging for a Romney-like figure who represents the pre-Trump Republican leadership to win the 2028 primary. Just 34 percent of Republicans said they wanted the party to move in a new direction, away from Mr. Trump.
Independent voters have a different view. More than 80 percent of them want Republicans to move away from Mr. Trump, an indication that the president has lost ground with the voters who often decide battleground elections.
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