Like It or Not, Prepare for a Biden vs. Trump Rematch in 2024

Our United States is slouching towards a presidential election that almost nobody wants.

The 2024 vote seems increasingly likely to be a re-match between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

It would be only the seventh re-match in the 59 presidential elections in American history and the first since President Dwight D. Eisenhower faced off against Adlai Stevenson for a second time in 1956.

Yet my polling shows that American voters as a whole are deeply unenthusiastic about both Biden and Trump.

According to our latest national survey, both are about equally unpopular, with Biden’s unfavorability rating of 52-45 percent only marginally different from Trump’s 52-44 percent.

But power operates according to certain well-worn dynamics, as I explore in my new book Power: The Fifty Truths. Everyone is acting in their rational self-interest, yet their interaction yields a sub-optimal outcome.

Despite public disdain, pressures on the Republican and Democratic parties are pushing each to re-do the 2020 contest even though the public would prefer a different choice.

Trump, of course, has falsely claimed that the 2020 vote was stolen from him and convinced a sizable section of his base that this was the case.

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He is fighting to re-litigate the result despite the courts rejecting his claims and his supporters failing to block certification of the election by storming Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

Although Ron DeSantis has emerged as Trump’s first serious rival in the Republican Party, it is questionable whether the Florida governor commands the personal devotion of his followers, as Trump does, and if he can withstand Trump’s withering attacks.

Although big donors such as the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity, which is supported by Charles Koch, are bailing on Trump, it is far from clear that Republican voters are going to follow them.

As I describe in my book, Trump, the larger-than-life tabloid character and reality TV star, is the first presidential candidate to master political messaging in the age of social media.

He has pioneered a method that I call “communicate to dominate” to control the narrative round the clock with unpredictable and inflammatory outbursts, even if the claims are manifestly untrue.

We are already seeing this in the 2024 race with Trump going as far as to hint on his Truth Social platform that DeSantis, a former teacher, may be some kind of pedophile “grooming high school girls with alcohol.”

His trademark two-word nickname “Ron DeSanctimonious” seems to have stuck, as did “Crooked Hillary” Clinton and “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz.

My own public polling conducted in early February by my firm Schoen Cooperman shows Trump leading DeSantis by 1 point in a head-to-head race, and by 11 points in a multi-candidate race, precisely what the contest is shaping up to be now that Nikki Haley and likely others are entering the race.

Biden is better placed than Trump to lock out rival pretenders for the Democratic nomination when he announces he is seeking re-election.

The Democrats’ relative success in the midterm elections has strengthened him within the party.

He has already taken steps to secure the party’s all-important African-American constituency, which rescued his campaign last time around.

As well as running again with Kamala Harris, Biden has promoted the heavily African-American South Carolina to replace New Hampshire as his party’s first primary and won the support of local congressman and 2020 kingmaker Rep. Jim Clyburn.

He will also benefit from his support for Hakeem Jeffries as the first Black leader of the House Democratic Caucus.

Biden beat Trump in 2020 despite spending months of the campaign in the basement of his home in Delaware.

As an incumbent, Biden will be campaigning this time round from the Oval Office with the famous White House “bully pulpit.”

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I have experience of running a re-election campaign from the White House with Bill Clinton in 1996.

While the challenger has to run around the country to get attention, the president can command attention from the Oval Office.

What’s more, the fundraising burden is eased because donors give easily to a sitting president.

So the 2024 contest is likely to follow the same pattern as the 2024 election, where the choice between Biden and Trump is settled by a relatively small group of independent voters.

Of course, both men will be four years older—Trump, 78, and Biden a record-setting 81 years old.

Once again, Biden’s greatest strength is likely to be that he is not Donald Trump.

Of the six previous presidential re-matches, the challenger has won four times: Thomas Jefferson in 1800; Andrew Jackson in 1828; William Henry Harrison in 1840; and Grover Cleveland in 1892. But on the last two occasions, the incumbent has won: William McKinley in 1900; and Eisenhower in 1956.

Our current polling suggests Biden would win the re-match against Trump by 45-42 percent, though 13 percent remain undecided.

If that is the eventual result, after all the twists and turns of the campaign, a United States that 63 percent of voters say is heading in the wrong direction will remain in an unsatisfactory stasis.