To be fair, this question applies to both parties in the latest Associated Press/NORC poll. However, Republicans will settle the question in a primary battle this year. Democrats supposedly settled it in 2019/2020.

Or did they?

The survey asked respondents to name the person they would consider the leader of the Republican and Democratic parties, as then asked partisans who they want to be each party’s leader. Even with President Biden occupying the White House, just 41% of Democrats name him as the current leader of their party. And 34% of Republicans were unable to name a leader of their party.

Twelve percent? For a sitting president?

The other readings in this poll give more bad news to Biden, but even more to Kamala Harris. In a separate question, both Biden and Harris score a majority-unfavorable rating with the general electorate, with both at 53%. Biden only gets 43% favorable, while Harris scores worse at 36%. Looking to the future, it’s worse too — only 3% of Democrat voters see Harris as a party leader. To compare, 5% of Democrats in this sample think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be the party’s leader — almost half of Biden’s support and almost twice that of the current VP and planned heir presumptive.

Biden has said that he will be deciding shortly whether to run for a second term, now that the State of the Union is over. The state of confidence in his presidency seems mighty low even among his captive voters, let alone the rest of the electorate, and should give even Biden’s backers for a 2024 bid a warning on what’s coming. Not even an eighth of the Democrat base sees Biden as a leader, and Harris’ support for leader doesn’t even get out of the range of statistical noise in this poll.

That should remind everyone of Harris’ inability to escape statistical-noise level in 2019, too. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose …

What about the GOP? The leadership muddle exists there too, but again, that’s not terribly surprising for a party that doesn’t hold the White House. Interestingly, Republican voters are roughly twice as likely to choose someone who should be a party leader. Trump and DeSantis both nearly double up on Biden:

About a third of both Democrats and Republicans are unsure of who they want to lead their party, and there is no clear leader named for either party. The most common response among Democrats is Biden (12%) and among Republicans, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is named by 22% and Donald Trump is named by 20%.

All of the other contenders put together add up to 21%, which may foreshadow the GOP’s nomination fight. If and when DeSantis gets into the race, it’s likely to rapidly shift to a two-person fight, since that’s how nearly half of Republican voters already see it. Nikki Haley may be able to dent that, but the polling data shows her support for party leader at just 1%. Everyone else explicitly mentioned in the poll ties Haley at the single-percent mark, for that matter. That includes potential contenders like Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, and Brian Kemp, but also figures such as George W. Bush and Ben Shapiro.

The only two people with any significant constituency in the GOP at the moment in terms of leadership are Trump and DeSantis. That’s at least the semblance of an answer, or at the very least a clear choice. Democrats don’t even have that much, even while holding the White House with a first-term president. That’s a stunning crisis in confidence — and yet another indication of just how bad a failure Biden and Harris have been.