Who do Kara Swisher's pollster guests see as the strongest 2028 presidential contenders?

Dave Wasserman thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be very hard to stop in a crowded Democratic field and names Jon Ossoff as another strong option. Terrence Woodbury says a single candidate of the left could take about 30% of the field, and that Abdul El-Sayed's Michigan Senate result will shape that debate. On the Republican side, Kristen Soltis Anderson sees J.D. Vance as the favorite, with Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis worth watching.

• Anderson's early polling has Vance at about 40 to 45% in the Republican primary, which she calls lackluster for a sitting vice president.
• Rubio has climbed from low single digits to roughly 10 to 15% in her polling.
• DeSantis kept coming up in her focus groups of Trump voters who are not consistently conservative.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Pivot (2026-10-25). Read the whole episode summary →

▸More from this episode