Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is already leading President Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2020 presidential race, according to a national poll released on Tuesday by Public Policy Polling.
Johnson, a former professional wrestler turned movie box office superstar, raised the question about him running for president in a GQ magazine cover story last week in which he talked about some of his positions on political issues.
The poll, taken after Trump fired FBI director James Comey, had Johnson leading Trump 42 percent to 37 percent in a prospective presidential contest, while winning over 15 percent of people who voted for Trump last year.
In the poll, 36 percent viewed Johnson favorably, 13 percent negatively and half had no opinion about him either way.
In a show of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans saw him positively, noted the poll: 38 percent of Democrats saw Johnson favorably (compared to 15 percent who saw him negatively) while 31 percent of Republicans saw him positively and 17 percent negatively.
"Personally, I feel that if I were president, poise would be important," Johnson said in the GQ article. "Leadership would be important. Taking responsibility for everybody. (If I didn't agree with someone) on something, I wouldn't shut them out. I would actually include them. The first thing we'd do is we'd come and sit down and we'd talk about it. It's hard to categorize right now how I think he's doing, other than to tell you how I would operate, what I would like to see."
Johnson, whose latest movie "Baywatch" hits theaters on May 25, was named by Forbes magazine last August as Hollywood's highest-paid actor after pulling in $64.5 million over the year.
If Johnson decided not to run for president, Trump would still get plenty of competition from traditional politicians, noted the poll. He would lose to former Vice President Joe Biden (54 percent to 40 percent) and former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (52 percent to 39 percent) in hypothetical matchups.
"There's significant defection from people who voted for Trump in November in each of those match ups – 15 percent of Trump voters say they'd choose Sanders over him and 14 percent say they'd choose Biden over him," said the poll.
The poll also shows Trump behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren (49/39), Sen. Al Franken (46/38), and Sen. Cory Booker (46/39).
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