Another Democratic star has skyrocketed to the top of the polls for potential 2028 contenders.
Former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg emerged as the frontrunner in an Emerson College poll among a crowded list of possible Democratic presidential nominees.
Buttigieg, 44, came in the lead with 19 percent of Democratic primary voters saying they would support him, followed by California Governor Gavin Newsom (17 percent), Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff (13 percent), and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (13 percent).
Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said Buttigieg garnered equal support from both men and women. Ossoff, who was added to the test Democratic ballot just this month, had 18 percent support from men compared to 8 percent among women. Newsom, meanwhile, was stronger among women at 25 percent compared to 8 percent among men. Support for Ocasio-Cortez was also higher among women at 16 percent against 9 percent among men.
Further down the list were former Vice President Kamala Harris, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and California Rep. Ro Khanna, who received anywhere from 2 percent to 8 percent.
Another 3 percent of Democratic voters said they would support an unspecified “someone else,” while 13 percent said they were still undecided.
The Emerson poll, conducted just this week, is the latest to offer a peek into how the 2028 Democratic contest could play out.
Buttigieg trailed AOC by just one point in a University of New Hampshire survey, with 22 percent of Democratic primary voters saying they would vote for the New York representative and 21 percent going in favor of the former transportation secretary.
Last week, after campaigning for Democratic congressional candidate Sarah Trone in Iowa, reporters asked Buttigieg if he would rule out a 2028 run.
“Nope,” he said simply.
“I already have a lot of great friends in Iowa, and it’s been fun to reactivate some of those relationships in the service of the ticket that’s on the ballot right now in ’26,” he told reporters. “I’m super focused on this year’s election. The future will come, but right now, we got a very important set of elections in front of us right now.”
“We are right to stand up against the abuses and the cruelty and everything that’s going on right now,” Buttigieg said. “We also need to remember that we are standing up for the kind of leadership that can get us past this point because there’s going to come a time when our job is not just to put a stop to everything that’s wrong right now, but to build what comes next.”
Buttigieg made headlines just last month after his family was targeted by an anonymous caller who contacted Child Protective Services with false accusations against him. The unidentified caller alleged that he had committed “unspeakable violent crimes” and warned that his four-year-old twin children could still be at risk.
“Everyone knows politics is ugly these days. It’s always been ugly, but now it feels more and more like bloodsport,” Buttigieg wrote in a Substack post about the incident. “At the most basic level, I worry about how anyone, even in today’s world, could fail to respect the absolutely fundamental principle that whatever you think about someone in politics, you leave people’s kids out of it.”
