Poll: 74% displeased with US' path

US voters seem to be in a cantankerous mood a year and a half before the next presidential election.

An NBC News national poll released Sunday found that 74 percent believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction. The poll found that just 20 percent of respondents believe that the United States is on an upward trajectory.

The survey respondents also expect a rematch in 2024 between Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former president Donald Trump.

Many voters are not thrilled about such a rerun, with 68 percent concerned about the health of Biden, who is 80, with 55 percent saying the same about Trump, 77.

Trump has a large lead in polls over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the 2024 GOP contest, but DeSantis performs better against Biden in the general election, the NBC survey showed. Biden leads Trump 49 percent to 45 percent, but Biden and DeSantis are tied at 47 percent each, the poll of 1,000 voters found.

About half of Republican voters said they prefer someone other than Trump.

Other Republican challengers to Trump include former vice-president Mike Pence; US Senator Tim Scott; former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley; and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who worked on Trump's 2020 campaign but has since been feuding with him; and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

The latest Real Clear Politics polling average shows Trump at 52.1 percent, with DeSantis at 21.5. Of the other challengers, only Pence registered above 5 percent (5.8).

"Not only are they sticking with Trump post-federal indictment," Horwitt said of Republican voters, "there are several signs that his support is growing, or others are losing ground, particularly Ron DeSantis," said Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, who conducted the NBC survey with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.

"Looking back at 2020, the election was a referendum on Donald Trump," said Horwitt, the Democratic pollster. "And if we have a Biden-Trump rematch, there are powerful signs that the focus will once again be more on Trump than Biden."

Also, in a potential electoral problem for the GOP, 61 percent of voters disapprove of the Supreme Court's ruling last year overturning federal abortion rights, while 36 percent approve.

The NBC News poll was taken June 16-20 — a week after a federal grand jury indicted Trump on criminal charges over the alleged mishandling of classified documents. It also was taken before new allegations that Biden was aware of his son Hunter's business dealings after the president previously had denied knowing so.

Another survey, by The Economist and YouGov, showed Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr with the highest favorability rating of all the current 2024 presidential candidates. Forty-nine percent said they saw him favorably, and 30 percent viewed him unfavorably. Kennedy's top polling number against Biden has been 20 percent.

Biden and Trump each had 44 percent favorability ratings.

Also, an Emerson College poll released last week showed that a third-party candidate could diminish Biden's re-election chances.

Cornel West, 70, a former Harvard professor and progressive activist, is seeking the presidency as a Green Party candidate after being affiliated with the People's Party.

"When West is added to the ballot test, he pulls 15 percent of support from black voters, and 13 percent from voters under 35, two key voting blocs for President Biden," said Spencer Kimball, the director of Emerson College Polling.

Jill Stein, a two-time Green Party presidential nominee, told CNN last week that she is now assisting West's campaign.