Emerson College Polling Director Spencer Kimball joined Andrew Walworth and Carl Cannon on Friday’s edition of the RCP Podcast, to discuss their most recent look at likely presidential candidates in 2028, and how Emerson fared predicting the results of the New York City’s ranked-choice mayoral race. “We looked smart on our show talking about Mamdani before he won-when Andrew Cuomo was still supposedly the favorite-because of your polling,” Carl Cannon told Kimball. “Eric Adams is very unpopular, but he’s the incumbent mayor,” Kimball explained. “But Cuomo pulls from the same base as Adams. So if both of them are running, it creates a path for Mamdani-unless the Republican, Curtis Sliwa, drops out. There are a lot of moving parts.” “In 2028, Vice President Vance is right now the heir apparent for the Republicans,” he also said. “We’ll see how that plays out, but he’s hovering around 50%. His biggest opponents would be Rubio and DeSantis out of Florida, both around 12%.” “On the Democratic side, the big news is Harris dropping out of that lead spot. She was hovering in the high 30s to low 40s nationally. Now she’s in the low teens,” he said. “Now it looks like the Democratic field is fairly wide open, and we’ll see who emerges.” “California Gov. Gavin Newsom is at 11%. He’s in the conversation-he’s part of the pack,” Kimball added. “But like on the Republican side, where it’s Vance way out in front, the Democrats are going to have to fight it out.” The survey also found the right track/wrong track number has started to trend down. “I think just some of the anxiety of new policies up in the air,” Kimball said. “Remember, the tariff policy was a new discussion. The Middle East policy here is a new discussion. People have anxiety when new ideas are floated out there. But over time, they digest these ideas, and we’re going to see how they react to them.” “We’ll see it at the ballot box in November. That’s what we’re trying to track and reflect.”
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