Who will win the 2024 American presidential election? A lot of people seem to think it’s done and dusted. Betting markets, while never the predictor many have hyped them as, do neatly summarise expectations, and on Thursday morning a random online outfit had an implied 69 per cent chance of a Republican (ie. Donald Trump) victory.
Many pundits seem convinced that anticipation drives outcomes, and that “the vibe” is crucial. Hillary Clinton might beg to differ.
We’ve gone from months of Trump leading Joe Biden, consistently if modestly, in national voting-intention polls — and more importantly, and by greater amounts, in swing states. Then came that awful Joe Biden debate performance and now the attempted assassination of Trump.
Not a large proportion of people watch election debates, but the showcasing of Biden’s frailty last month, particularly that long freeze, received such wall-to-wall coverage that very few Americans of voting age would not have seen the highlights and digested the commentary. The contrast with the energetic, verbally dextrous Trump, only a few years younger, was stark. What was a nagging concern shifted from back of mind to front. Biden is toast, whether he contests or not.
The widespread assumption seems to be that the Trump shooting (which killed one attendee and seriously injured several others) has all but guaranteed the Republican’s win. The party’s national convention (still in progress as we press “publish”) is capitalising on and bringing it all together in an orgy of evangelicalism that, apparently, will last all the way to 5 November. Expect the word “momentum” to get a good workout over the next several weeks.
But to assume Trump’s victory is a fait accompli is to be hostage to the present. Public outpourings of grief, shock, sympathy and even elation tend to have short half-lives. Where will Americans be in a month’s time, or in two? And there are three and a half to go. Life will go on. The glow will mostly dissipate by the time people are casting their votes.
Even before last weekend, the polls seemed to have emboldened Trump. Four years ago he chose a running mate designed to placate the Republican establishment. This time he’s gone for someone a lot like himself, more articulate but also, it seems, more radical. J.D. Vance has even said that unlike Mike Pence he would not have certified Biden’s presidency on 6 January 2021.
Maybe there’s just not much of the Republican establishment left. Or perhaps Trump took seriously Tucker Carlson’s warning that with a “neocon” — an old-fashioned Republican — as understudy “the U.S. intelligence agencies would have every incentive to assassinate Mr. Trump in order to get their preferred president.”
So Trump has doubled down. Great for the vibe, the momentum, the expectations game.
But reality should drive perceptions, not the other way around. The term “Trump voters” is often misused. Red-cap wearing MAGA voters were important in 2016, and again made the result close in 2020, but there are not nearly enough of them to produce victory. Not everyone who voted for Trump in the last two elections, and not everyone telling pollsters today that they will, is fanatically pro-Trump.
Some are just people who vote Republican. Others are suffering cost-of-living pains and having trouble paying mortgages and would like to see something new tried out. The crisis at the southern border is certainly biting. But does either group actually want to see the system torn down?
Exit polls at the last two elections strongly suggest several things (and I wield a very broad brush). There was, of course, the strong 2016 swing to the Republican candidate among low-income earners. At the same time, the polls showed a noticeable shift to Hillary Clinton among high-income voters, particularly the moderately high (households on $100,000–200,000 per annum).
Four years later, low-income earners stuck with Trump but that high income group swung to him as well. Perhaps many had feared his populist tendencies would disturb their comfortable existences but were placated when he generally pursued rather orthodox Republican economic policies, including tax cuts for the wealthy. It was in fact the suburban $50,000–$100,000 cohort that shifted big to the Democratic Biden four years ago.
In 2024, though, with an “economic populist” deputy and possibly heir apparent, and a wide expectation that a second administration will include no Republican gatekeepers to suppress his wilder inclinations, can the wealthy voters who supported Trump in 2020 be scared off, as they were to an extent in 2016?
What of the other side? If the Democrats are to win, Biden has to be convinced to drop out. I would replace him with someone bland and inoffensive, say like Senator Amy Klobuchar from the 2020 primary campaign. But in the realm of the possible, the easiest path is to vice-president Kamala Harris. Inside Story recently ran an article by the Washington Monthly’s political editor Bill Sher suggesting that Biden stand down from the presidency itself so that Harris can “show” American “how she would do the job… by doing the job.”
I second the motion. It has long been recognised that she is a drag on Biden (including, perhaps, in 2020) but if she became president her persona would, or should, quickly change. Taking charge, issuing orders. She would be the incumbent.
I go on about incumbency a lot on these pages. Do I succumb to the temptation of viewing American electoral politics through an Australian lens? Citizens of the two countries are different. Americans are more religious, less cynical, more susceptible to schmaltz. They’re also probably less fearful of trying new things. (A wise person once noted that Australians are world beaters at being scared of change but then adapt to it with exceptional ease.)
Primary contests over there facilitate extreme Congress members on both sides, but particularly among Republicans. Our electoral systems also push in different directions. Australia’s compulsory and (at federal level) full-preferential voting system encourages moderation or, put less kindly, punishes derring-do and imagination. There’s something like a zero-sum equation: an unpopular government or stress-inducing opposition pushes votes, directly or after preferences, to the other side. The two-candidate-preferred numbers have to add up to 100. Our 2022 election illustrated that (but also the continuing breakdown of the two-party system) in spades.
In America, with historically low turnout and what is effectively first-past-the-post voting in fifty electorates (variously weighted) for presidents, generating enthusiasm to get the vote out matters a lot. But it also clashes with the need to appeal to the middle ground. Biden’s 2020 campaign platform possibly erred on the turnout side, including in his choice of running mate. (On the other hand, the obsession over “swing states,” and the often wafer-thin characterisations of the people who live there, is extremely familiar to us; we call them “marginal electorates.”)
So I’m trying not to fall into the trap of carelessly applying our “lesser of two evils” template onto Americans.
But it seems that Trump is now, in his veep choice, preaching to the choir. At time of writing his nomination acceptance speech has not been delivered but is widely reported to have been rewritten. It will now be about him bringing the country together to heal the wounds and end the division. That’s a much-used and hackneyed political message, and it might go down well this week, but by November will be at the very least dog-eared and perhaps just plain preposterous — unless Trump can truly change his vitriolic ways. It’s also a radically different message from the retributive one that’s fuelled his success.
In a post-Biden world, immigration will return as the Democrats’ Achilles heel. But Biden’s departure will also make it easier to present a turning of that page. That’s one of those turnout-versus-the-middle-ground conundrums.
Hot off the presses is the news that the eighty-one-year-old has again tested positive to Covid. Those online markets now have Harris slightly favoured over him to be the Democrat nominee.
I reckon this race is far from over. If Biden doesn’t run. •
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