Obama vs. Trump Poll: Who Would Win Election Between President And President-Elect?

President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump have already had their say on the issue, and now a new poll suggests the country is very much split on the question of who they would vote for in a hypothetical election between the two.

Trump came out marginally on top, with 45 percent of respondents to a Morning Consult/Politico poll indicating they would prefer Trump and 44 percent stating they would rather a third term for Obama. The poll, released Wednesday, surveyed the views of 2,000 registered voters Dec. 28 through Dec. 29, with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.

As for the question of who voters think would win a contest between Trump and Obama, however, more voters are in line with Obama’s view that he would triumph. The man who will end his eight years in the White House in two weeks’ time was thought a likely winner by 47 percent of respondents, compared to 42 percent who thought Trump would emerge victorious.

Obama weighed in on the issue of whether he would have succeeded where Hillary Clinton failed in November’s presidential election during a podcast interview with his former adviser David Axelrod last month.

“I am confident in this vision –of a tolerant, diverse and open one America] because I'm confident that if I – if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” he said. “I know that in conversations that I've had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one.”

Unsurprisingly, Trump swiftly responded with a very different take. “President Obama said he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but NO WAY! – jobs leaving, ISIS [Islamic State], OCare [Obamacare], etc.”

In the November election, Trump received 306 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232, but the Democratic nominee won the popular vote by almost three million votes.