Biden vs. Trump Is Bound to Be Close
Three fundamental facts define our current political era: We are deeply divided along partisan lines and are closely divided at the national level, but at the state and congressional levels, jurisdictions increasingly give supermajorities to one party. This environment produces presidential elections with narrow national popular-vote margins decided by a small share of the electorate in a dwindling number of swing states. Based on the evidence thus far, 2024 isn’t likely to break this pattern, which has increasingly defined U.S.
politics since the late 1980s. RealClearPolitics’ widely cited average of polls shows President Biden, the likely Democratic nominee, leading Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, by less than 1 percentage point. A recent Wall Street Journal poll has them in a dead heat, 46% to 46%.
In such a close contest, defections to independent and third-party candidacies can be decisive, as they were in 2016. If Messrs. Biden and Trump end up as the standard bearers of their parties, the 2024 presidential election will be unlike any that we have seen in our lifetime.
Not since 1892 have the president and the incumbent he defeated had a rematch. In nearly all elections featuring a president seeking re-election, the election is mostly a referendum on the incumbent’s performance. If voters think he has done a good enough job to deserve another term, he will almost certainly win, no matter the merits of his challenger.
The 1956 election, in which President Dwight D. Eisenhower handily defeated former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, is a good example.
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