2024 President

There were no real surprises in Iowa on Monday night, as the kickoff contest of the Republican presidential nominating season unfolded in almost exactly the way that polls suggested. Former President Donald Trump got about half the vote, with the race for a very distant second place coming down to a close contest between Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC). According to results as of early Tuesday morning, Trump was at 51%, with DeSantis nabbing second place at 21% and Haley finishing close behind at 19%. The fourth-place finisher, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, got a little under 8% and immediately dropped out. Nobody else got even 1%.

There is an old saying that there are “three tickets out of Iowa,” meaning that the traditional kickoff caucus doesn’t necessarily anoint the presidential nominees, but it does serve a purpose in winnowing often-bloated presidential primary fields. As we will discuss below, Iowa does indeed have a spotty record of supporting the eventual nominee, particularly on the Republican side.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Despite bad polling and clear weaknesses for President Biden, we are sticking with our initial Electoral College ratings from the summer, which show him doing better than what polls today would indicate, even as there are enough Toss-up electoral votes to make the election anyone’s game. — We still anticipate a close and competitive election between Biden and former President Trump, whose dominance in the GOP primary race has endured as the Iowa caucus looms. Assessing the 2024 race Welcome to 2024, the year of a presidential election that feels both sleepy and explosive at the same time. The former feeling stems from a primary season that does not seem all that competitive. Less than two weeks away from the kickoff Republican caucus in Iowa, former President Donald Trump’s position continues to look strong, while President Joe Biden is doing what recent incumbent presidents have done, deterring truly notable opposition as he seeks renomination. The latter feeling comes from the unprecedented specifics of the potential Biden versus Trump rematch, namely Trump’s litany of legal problems—including efforts to keep him off the ballot in certain states based on his role in the events of Jan.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican primary race. — Despite some recent movement toward Nikki Haley, Trump’s rivals are not doing even close to well enough with college-educated Republicans—a group that is not as pro-Trump as Republicans who do not hold a four-year degree. — Non-degree holders appear likely to make up a larger share of the early state electorate than degree holders, further complicating the math for Trump’s rivals. A beer track vs. wine track check-in As we look ahead to—even perhaps as GOP primary voters look past—tonight’s fourth Republican presidential primary debate, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has become a focus in the race. She arguably has surpassed Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) as former President Donald Trump’s leading rival, and she recently won the support of Americans for Prosperity, the well-funded conservative outside group founded by the Koch brothers. DeSantis still generally leads Haley nationally—he’s at 13% while Haley is at about 10.5%, per the FiveThirtyEight average. DeSantis also has a small lead on Haley in Iowa, the first contest of the nomination season. But Haley leads DeSantis in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the latter of which

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Recent 2024 presidential polling has shown President Biden performing poorly with young voters. — The 18-29 voting bloc has been reliably Democratic leaning for at least the last several presidential elections. — Biden’s weakness with young voters is not new, despite doing well among the group in the 2020 general election. A brief history of young voters in presidential elections Polling this far out from a presidential general election is often not predictive, and it is a good thing for President Joe Biden that this is the case, because his polling right now against his most likely general election opponent, former President Donald Trump, is poor. Trump has led Biden in most recent national surveys included in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, with Trump leading by about 2 points in the average. One of the features of many (though not all) of these polls is striking weakness for Biden among what has become a very Democratic-leaning group of voters: 18-29 year olds. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump among the 18-29 group by roughly 25 points, according to the 2020 exit poll conducted by Edison Research for a variety of news organizations, a different

Dear Readers: Today we are featuring an excerpt from Patrick Ruffini’s new book, Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP. Ruffini, a Republican pollster and cofounder of the firm Echelon Insights, meticulously tracks the political changes in the wake of Donald Trump’s ascension to the top of the Republican Party. In the excerpt below, Ruffini documents the improvements Trump made in 2020 among nonwhite voters even as he lost his reelection bid. We also spoke with Ruffini about his book as well as recent polling trends on our “Politics is Everything” podcast. — The Editors From PARTY OF THE PEOPLE: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP by Patrick Ruffini. Copyright © 2023 by Patrick Ruffini. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, LLC. The story in the 2020 presidential election was largely that of an electorate that had made up its mind on Donald Trump four years earlier, with just the right number of votes in just the right states turning a narrow victory into a narrow defeat—but with one crucial exception. In most of America’s nonwhite communities—especially those filled with first- and second-generation immigrants—Trump did better than he had in 2016. In

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Potentially weak major party nominees paired with a long list of third party candidates could lead to a higher-than-usual level of third party voting in 2024. — Recent third party performance has generally been strongest in western states and weakest in the South. — The states that are most likely to decide the 2024 election have not had high average third party voting this century. Where voters are most open to third party presidential candidates We feel very confident in saying that the next president will be a Democrat or a Republican (I know what you’re thinking — the Crystal Ball sure is going out on a limb here!) But we start with this blindingly obvious statement as we consider that the list of third party candidates may be long in 2024. Most recently, and most notably, vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. switched from the Democratic primary to making an independent bid, and early polls have shown him getting considerable support (more on that momentarily). In addition to RFK Jr., left-wing intellectual Cornel West is also running, most recently deciding to run as a true independent instead of seeking the Green Party nomination.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — History suggests that whoever wins the Republican presidential nomination is unlikely to choose one of their rivals for the nomination as his or her running mate. — This has happened on occasion in the recent past — including Joe Biden selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate in 2020 — but it is very uncommon, especially on the Republican side. — Running mates in recent times often, though not always, have not run for president before. They often are not from the ranks of those who were early endorsers of the eventual nominee. Moreover, in modern times they have always been past or present officeholders. Lessons from history on VP selection When pundits run short of things to say about presidential nominating races, they often turn to the choice of the vice presidential running mate. This cycle, an unusual amount of early speculation is already occurring about the Republican vice presidential choice as some, perhaps prematurely, view the presidential nominee as apparent. The past is not always prologue regarding vice presidential selection because each new cycle presents different circumstances and a presidential nominee who has never, or perhaps only once, chosen a running mate,

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Despite weak overall favorability, Joe Biden and Donald Trump could combine for the strongest presidential nominating performance in modern history. — Since the advent of the current nominating system in each party, which dates to the early 1970s, at least one of the two eventual major party nominees suffered at least some losses during the primary season. — It is possible that Biden and Trump could both sweep every contest next year. — Several nominating seasons came close to producing such a sweep, particularly in the 1996-2004 range. The possibility of a Biden/Trump sweep There is no shortage of evidence suggesting the general election weakness of the two frontrunners for the major party presidential nominations, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. They have very similar, and low, favorability. According to the RealClearPolitics averages, Biden’s favorability is 41% favorable and 55% unfavorable. Trump’s is a similar 40%/56% split. That is comparable to the weak favorability of Trump and his opponent, Hillary Clinton, on the eve of the 2016 election: The same average pegged Trump’s split at 38%/59%, with Clinton a bit better at 42%/54%. The 2016 election was widely regarded as featuring the

Dear Readers: We will be reacting to Wednesday night’s second Republican presidential primary debate on the “Politics is Everything” podcast. Look for it later today here or wherever you get your podcasts. — The Editors KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Like so many other female politicians, Nikki Haley faces a “woman problem” and must combat sexist rhetoric that is prevalent in politics and has been since Victoria C. Woodhull became the first woman to run for president in 1872. — Campaigns and elections are more challenging for women than men due to structural disadvantages, including media coverage of candidates, public opinion, and stereotypes. — Women are more pessimistic than men about the prospects for a female president. Fewer women than men think many Americans are ready to elect a woman to higher office even though more women than men personally hope that a woman will become president in their lifetime. The challenges for women running for president Like so many other female politicians, Nikki Haley faces a “woman problem.” Despite Haley’s political experience as governor of South Carolina and Ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump Administration, she was not taken seriously as a candidate until the first

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — The presidential voting gap between the nation’s most populous counties and the rest of the nation has nearly tripled from 1996 to 2020. — The 2000 and 2016 elections were the biggest contributors to this gap. — While there is nearly a 40-point difference between the top and bottom halves, the gap did not grow from 2016-2020. Top vs. bottom halves, 1996-2020 Among the many things that stand out from a longer-term look at how the nation’s biggest counties vote versus the rest of the country is this: The George W. Bush realignment of 2000 was comparable to the Donald Trump realignment of 2016 in widening the gap between the nation’s two halves. As part of our ongoing series in comparing the “top halves” to the “bottom halves” of both the nation and individual states, we decided to expand our look at the nation to encompass not just the changes between 2012 and 2020 — which we did in Part One of this series — but also the trajectory of the last quarter century, from Bill Clinton’s second victory in 1996 to Joe Biden’s win in 2020. As a reminder, what we are doing

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE — Negative partisanship — the tendency for partisans to be animated by dislike for the other side — has become a powerful force in American politics. — This dynamic makes it harder for partisans to cross over to the other side and keeps general elections quite competitive. — Attacks on Donald Trump by Democrats, liberals, and mainstream media figures and even indictments by federal and state prosecutors on serious criminal charges have only served to reinforce the loyalty of Republican voters to Trump. Negative partisanship buoys Trump Less than six months before voters begin casting ballots in the first presidential caucuses and primaries, former President Donald Trump continues to dominate the field of Republican candidates. According to RealClearPolitics as of Aug. 22, Trump is receiving an average of 55.9% support in national polls of Republican voters compared with 14.6% for his nearest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Moreover, Trump’s margin over DeSantis has increased in recent months following indictments in multiple jurisdictions for allegedly criminal conduct including his notorious efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. What is perhaps even more surprising than Trump’s domination of the Republican nomination contest is his