The congresswoman has vowed to block Trump from the Oval Office, but a new survey suggests she would swing the election his way
US Representative Liz Cheney is shown participating in a US House hearing last June on the January 2021 Capitol riot. © Getty Images / Anna Moneymaker
US Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) has flirted with running for president, allegedly to block Donald Trump from getting his old job back, but a new poll suggests that her candidacy would ensure that the former commander-in-chief would defeat incumbent Democrat Joe Biden in 2024.
Biden would lose about one-third of his support from Democrats and independents if voters were given a non-Trump option, even if that candidate were a Republican, according to a Yahoo/YouGov poll released on Tuesday. The incumbent would win a head-to-head matchup with Trump by a small margin, 42% to 39%, the survey showed, but with Cheney running as an independent candidate, the ex-president would defeat Biden by eight percentage points, 37-29.
“She could single-handedly swing the election to Trump,” Yahoo News said.
Cheney’s potential spoiler role would be ironic, inasmuch as she voted to impeach Trump and blamed him for inciting the January 2021 US Capitol riot. A Trump-backed candidate ensured that Cheney won’t be returning to Congress, trouncing her by nearly 40 percentage points in last week’s Wyoming Republican primary. Cheney reacted by comparing herself to Abraham Lincoln, the most popular president in American history, and vowing to do “whatever it takes to ensure Donald Trump is never again anywhere near the Oval Office.”
As it turns out, US voters aren’t especially keen to see any of the three politicians run for president in 2024. Just 20% of US adults, including 38% of Democrats, believe Biden should run for re-election, the Yahoo/YouGov poll showed. Around 28%, including 57% of Republicans, would like to see Trump run again. Only 19%, including 10% of Americans in her own party, said Cheney should enter the race.
Cheney would likely need to run as a third-party candidate because she would appear to have little chance of winning the Republican nomination. In a three-way Republican primary race including Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Cheney, the congresswoman would win just 6% of the votes, the poll showed. Survey respondents favored Trump over DeSantis by a 50-32 margin.
However, among independent voters, who tend to decide elections in the polarized US political system, DeSantis is favored over Trump by a 38-36 margin. In a two-way race, Trump holds a 39-32 lead over Biden among independents.
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