A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Monday found 8 in 10 Democrat primary voters want to see a debate between President Joe Biden and his opponents.
In reporting the poll results, USA Today said that the odds of Biden taking the debate stage are "as close to zero as you can get in politics."
"As you know, no incumbent R [Republican] or D [Democrat] have done [primary] debates," Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in an email to the news outlet.
While most Democrat primary voters, 79.52%, said they want Biden to debate his challengers, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and author Marianne Williamson, before the primary is held, 58.02% said they would vote for Biden if the primary were held today, according to the poll.
Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos told USA Today that choosing not to debate is ignoring the wishes of a vast swath of Democrat voters.
"The decision not to debate is ignoring the 82% of women, 84% of union households, 86% of independents, and 90% of young voters who are not only planning to vote in their state's Democratic primary or caucus next year but also would like to see a series of Democratic primary debates," he said in the report.
Kennedy said in the report that the apparent lack of a debate is "unfortunate," while Williamson said the move was "candidate suppression."
"Candidate suppression is a form of voter suppression, and the party that purports to be the champion of democracy should not be so wary of it in our own house," USA Today reported Williamson writing in an opinion piece.
The poll of 1,000 registered voters was conducted June 5-9 through live telephone interviews and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points, according to the university.
Newsweek reported in April that Kennedy said the Democratic National Committee has "no plans" to hold debates among that party's candidates in the 2024 race.
While the DNC did not directly confirm the information to Newsweek, the outlet pointed to a Washington Post report several days earlier that the organization supported Biden's reelection bid and would not be sponsoring any debates.
Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on Twitter at the time that not holding debates does not give Democrats any choices this election cycle.
"How are Democrat voters ok with this?" Greene posted April 23. "Your own party is telling you that you have no choice, and they refuse to even give you a choice. They should just go ahead and call themselves the Democrat Communist Party."
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