Will Chris Murphy run for president in 2028?

Chris Murphy, the U.S. senator from Connecticut, is tracked as a possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidate. His May 2026 book release, Crisis of the Common Good, and subsequent national media rollout -- including an NPR Book of the Day interview on June 23, 2026 -- kept him in 2028 dark-horse conversation without constituting a formal campaign step. When asked about 2028 ambitions, Murphy declined to confirm them but went further than most possible candidates: he told CT Mirror on May 26, 2026, that he would be 'foolish to spend much time on it given there is no guarantee of an election in 2028.' This framing -- questioning democratic conditions rather than saying the timing is not right -- distinguishes him from the rest of the possible field. He has not filed with the Federal Election Commission, has not formed a campaign committee, and has taken no public steps consistent with a presidential campaign.

Connecticut has 7 electoral votes and is classified Safe Democratic -- it voted Democratic at the presidential level in 2016, 2020, and 2024. A Connecticut-based presidential nominee would not add a competitive swing state to the Democratic ticket; the running-mate pick would need to supply battleground credibility from Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), Georgia (16 electoral votes), North Carolina (16 electoral votes), Michigan (15 electoral votes), Arizona (11 electoral votes), or Wisconsin (10 electoral votes). Murphy's Senate seat is not on the November 2028 ballot -- he won re-election in November 2024 and his term runs through January 2031 -- removing the dual-campaign timing conflict that affects Raphael Warnock (whose seat is on the 2028 ballot) or that affected Rand Paul in 2016.

The 12th Amendment provides that a state's presidential electors may not cast both their presidential and vice-presidential votes for candidates from their own state. Murphy is a Connecticut resident. None of the other leading 2028 Democratic contenders are currently Connecticut residents -- the California pairing (Newsom and Harris, 54 EV), the Michigan pairing (Buttigieg and Whitmer, 15 EV), and the New Jersey pairing (Phil Murphy and Cory Booker, 14 EV) each create specific same-state constraints that do not apply to a Murphy candidacy. Other tracked Democratic contenders are from Pennsylvania (Shapiro), Kentucky (Beshear), Arizona (Kelly and Gallego), Georgia (Warnock), Maryland (Moore), Illinois (Pritzker), Minnesota (Walz and Klobuchar), Colorado (Polis), and New York (AOC). The 12th Amendment same-state constraint is not a specific concern for Murphy.

Murphy does not appear as a named choice in any national Democratic primary survey as of mid-2026. The mid-2026 surveys name Harris, Newsom, Buttigieg, AOC, Shapiro, Beshear, Booker, Pritzker, and Kelly as named respondent choices; Murphy is not among them, reflecting his lack of formal campaign activity. He is constitutionally eligible to run for president. He is a natural-born U.S. citizen, is 52 years old as of mid-2026 and would be approximately 54 on Election Day, November 7, 2028 -- above the constitutional minimum of 35 -- and meets the 14-year U.S. residency requirement. The 22nd Amendment does not apply because he has never been president.