2028, Ready or Not

In theory, the campaign for president doesn’t start until the day after the midterms this November, but the unofficial race has been going on for some time now – even if the prospective candidates are still being coy about their plans.

A new poll released Sunday from the Financial Times shows Kamala Harris with an enviable head start. The former vice president and 2024 Democratic Party leads the hypothetical Democratic primary field for 2028 with 37% support, followed by Gavin Newsom (17%), Pete Buttigieg (8%), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (7%).

This tracks with other recent surveys, and aligns neatly with the current RCP Average for the Democratic nomination:

However, while Harris is the clear frontrunner according to the polls, if you look at the betting odds/prediction markets, you see a much different picture.

According to Polymarket, as of Monday afternoon, Newsom is the clear favorite in the Democratic primary (24%), with AOC a distant second (9%), followed by Kamala Harris (8%), Jon Ossoff (7%), Josh Shapiro (6%), and Pete Buttigieg (4%).

By contrast, there is little discrepancy between the polls and the betting markets on the Republican side: JD Vance is the favorite in both, followed by Marco Rubio, with no one else in shouting distance.

So why the divergence for Democrats?

One likely reason is Harris herself: While she has strong name identification and Democratic primary voters still have mostly warm feelings for her, a significant number of party activists and rank-and-file voters alike believe she is a flawed candidate who ran a subpar campaign and lost a winnable race in 2024. Those concerns continue to linger.

More broadly, the variance between the polls and the markets demonstrates just how wide open the Democratic primary will be in 2028. The 2020 Democratic primary featured the largest, most competitive field in U.S. presidential history, with more than two dozen declared candidates.

The early indications are that the 2028 Democratic primary race will be just as crowded and competitive.