Key facts
- Some 45% of Republican voters rated Rubio an excellent candidate; 43% said the same of Vance, per the Reuters/Ipsos poll.
- Ossoff and Buttigieg each drew a 29% excellent rating from Democratic voters in the Reuters/Ipsos poll.
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis drew 32% of Republicans rating him an excellent option, per the poll.
- Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom each drew 23% excellent ratings from Democrats; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew 15%.
- About one in five Democrats said they had never heard of Buttigieg, against roughly one in three for Ossoff, per the poll.
- Trump has asked allies whether they prefer Vance or Rubio, the report says.
Four potential contenders for the 2028 White House have drawn early attention from American voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday, November 9, 2026: Republicans JD Vance and Marco Rubio and Democrats Jon Ossoff and Pete Buttigieg. None of the four has formally launched a campaign, and the parties' 2028 nominating contests are more than a year away.
Some 45% of Republican voters polled said they believed Rubio, the secretary of state, would be an excellent presidential candidate, with 43% saying the same of Vance, the vice president. Buttigieg, a former transportation secretary, and Ossoff, a US senator from Georgia, each got that rating from 29% of Democratic voters.
The poll surveyed 1,705 US adults nationwide, including roughly 500 registered voters from each party, and had a margin of error of 5 percentage points for Republican and Democratic voters.
President Donald Trump, whose approval rating the report describes as near the lowest of his career, looms over the conversation in both parties. Republicans are divided on whether they want a candidate who breaks with Trump or follows him, while Democrats, after routing Republicans in the November 3 congressional elections, are divided on how aggressively to go after the president, including through impeachment. Trump has asked allies whether they prefer Vance or Rubio and said in a Sunday interview with CBS's 60 Minutes that he would not necessarily make an endorsement in the Republican primary.
Barbara Rezner, an attorney in Florida who voted for Trump in the last three presidential elections, said she prefers Rubio over Vance, whom she considers too far to the right and too close to the president. "Rubio has managed to do his job. He's stayed off most people's radar because he hasn't done anything too far left, too far right, too crazy," Rezner said.
The report ties modest but growing dissatisfaction with Trump among Republicans to his decision to launch a war on Iran that has driven fuel prices higher. It says Rubio has been notably absent from many of the so-far fruitless peace talks with Iran despite being the nation's top diplomat, and that Vance has said publicly the Republican drubbing in the midterm elections owed to the war with Iran.
A dozen-odd other Republicans are in the national conversation, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis among the best regarded at 32% of Republicans rating him an excellent option. Donald Trump Jr. and Texas US Senator Ted Cruz have fans but also many detractors, the report says.
Among Democrats, Ossoff has grabbed headlines by calling Trump corrupt and unfit for office, and last week won his re-election race by 18 percentage points in Georgia, a state Trump carried by 2 points in 2024. Buttigieg ran for president in 2020 and is better known nationally. About one in five Democrats said they had never heard of Buttigieg, against roughly one in three for Ossoff; about one in six Republicans said they do not know who Rubio is.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Governor Gavin Newsom each drew excellent candidate ratings of 23% from Democrats, above the 15% who viewed US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that way. Ocasio-Cortez told CNN after the midterms that impeaching Trump should be an option on the table, while Buttigieg told the New Yorker he is not very interested in impeachment. Democratic strategist Elaine Kamarck cautioned against reading too deeply into the numbers this far out. "It's a world away," Kamarck said.