With the 2028 presidential election more than two years away, Vice President JD Vance is trailing four potential Democratic rivals in early general election polling and carries a narrow lead over one. A polling average tracked by the analytics account Race to the WH shows former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Democratic Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff leading Vance in hypothetical general election matchups. Buttigieg leads Vance 48.5 percent to 43.9 percent, while Ossoff has a similar lead, 48.5 percent to 44.1 percent.
Ossoff has repeatedly said he has no interest in running for president in 2028. Former Vice President Kamala Harris also leads Vance, 48.3 percent to 44.4 percent, while Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom holds a narrower lead, 45.5 percent to 43.6 percent. Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the only Democrat in the average who trails Vance, at 42 percent compared with Vance's 44.9 percent.
No candidate in either party has formally entered the 2028 race. The tracker lists Buttigieg, Ossoff, Ocasio-Cortez, Harris and Newsom among its most-polled Democratic names. On the Republican side, Vance has said he will wait until after November's midterm elections to discuss his own plans.
Buttigieg holds the widest lead of any Democrat tested against Vance in the Emerson survey behind the Race to the WH averages and the former transportation secretary is gaining ground. Eight percent of voters were undecided in that matchup. Buttigieg was also the only Democrat in the poll with an identical five-point lead in a hypothetical matchup against Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican often viewed alongside Vance as a potential top 2028 contender.
Ossoff and Newsom saw their leads over Rubio narrow to three points and two points, respectively, while Harris trailed Rubio by five points despite leading Vance. A year earlier, the picture looked different. Emerson's July 2025 poll had Vance ahead of Buttigieg by a single point, 44 percent to 43 percent, with 13 percent undecided.
"A key takeaway from the ballot tests is that about 13% of the electorate remains persuadable, while the other 87% have already settled on a party preference," Spencer Kimball, Emerson's executive director, said at the time. Buttigieg's numbers track with his standing in a hypothetical Democratic primary. Emerson showed him leading the field with 19 percent in July, and Quantus Insights put him at 25.7 percent in August, ahead of Ossoff at 21.3 percent and Ocasio-Cortez at 15.3 percent.
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