Former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said Democrats might have fared better in Tuesday’s election if President Joe Biden had exited the race sooner.

Pelosi – one of the most powerful politicians in Washington – told the New York Times that “had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race”.

Her remarks are the latest finger pointing from Democrats after the party lost hold of the White House and potentially both chambers of Congress on Tuesday.

Pelosi is widely reported to have led the Democrats’ push to oust Biden, who ended up leaving the race at the end of July after weeks of pressure following a poor debate performance against Donald Trump.

As Biden ended his campaign, he quickly endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to take his place. She suffered a bruising defeat to President-elect Trump on Tuesday.

Pelosi told the New York Times: “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”

An open primary would have involved a number of Democratic candidates competing to be elected by party members to succeed Biden as their White House nominee.

Pelosi argued that Harris would have done well in such a primary process and it would have made her “stronger going forward”.

“But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened,” the California congresswoman, who was re-elected to her 20th term in the House on Tuesday, said.

“And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”

Speaking to political news outlet Politico, Harris aides also laid the blame at Biden’s feet and said he should have bowed out sooner.

“We ran the best campaign we could, considering Joe Biden was president,” said one unnamed aide. “Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost tonight.”