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.
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.
