Melbourne : The United States general election will be held on November 5, 2024. In early 2024, there are Democratic and Republican presidential nominating contests that will elect delegates to the parties' nominating conventions. These conventions, in July (for Republicans) and August (Democrats) officially select their parties' presidential candidates.
The first contest is the Iowa Republican caucus on January 15, followed by the New Hampshire primary for both parties on January 23. There are several other contests in February before many states vote on Super Tuesday, March 5. The early contests account for a low percentage of total delegates, with under 10 per cent of delegates determined by the Michigan primary on February 27.
A caucus is managed by the state party, and often requires voters to gather at a particular time. A primary is managed by the state's electoral authority, and is administered in the same way as a general election. Turnout at primaries is much higher than at caucuses. In 2024, the large majority of contests use primaries.
Democratic delegates are allocated proportionally with a 15 per cent threshold. Republican delegate allocation depends on the state: some states allocate delegates proportionally, but many others allocate delegates winner takes all or winner takes most. In FiveThirtyEight polling aggregates, former president Donald Trump is way ahead in national Republican primary polls with 61.7 per cent, followed by Ron DeSantis at 12.2 per cent and Nikki Haley at 11.3 per cent.
Trump is also dominant in Iowa with 46.7 per cent, followed by DeSantis at 19.6 per cent and Haley at 15.0 per cent. If the election results reflect these national polls, Trump will win a huge majority of delegates. On the Democratic side, no prominent Democrat has challenged President Joe Biden. Biden has 65.8 per cent nationally with Marianne Williamson on 7.6 per cent and Dean Phillips on 5.4 per cent.
Trump leads in general election polls- In the presidential general election, there are 538 electoral votes and it takes 270 to win. Electoral votes are assigned to states as the sum of their House seats (population based) and senators (always two), so the lowest-population states have three EVs. With two minor exceptions, states award their EVs as winner-takes-all.
Trump won the 2016 election despite losing the national popular vote by 2.1 per cent. In 2020, Biden won the popular vote by 4.5 per cent but only won the state that gave him over 270 EVs by 0.6 per cent. It's likely Trump will benefit again from the skew in the electoral votes.
Biden's FiveThirtyEight national ratings are 55.6 per cent disapprove, 38.3 per cent approve (net -17.3). His ratings have been sliding since March, when he was at net -7.3.
Economic pessimism is helping Trump- In an early December national Wall Street Journal poll, two-thirds rated the economy poor or not good, and two-thirds said it had become worse in the past two years, during Biden's tenure. Trump led Biden by 5235 on best to handle the economy. By 5323, voters thought Biden's policies had hurt rather than helped them personally, while they thought Trump's policies had helped by 4937.
US headline and core inflation were about 2 per cent annually before COVID, but the headline inflation peaked at 8.9 per cent in June 2022. While inflation has dropped to 3.1 per cent in November, voters still remember that goods and services used to be much cheaper.
Real (inflation-adjusted) wages were up 0.2 per cent in hourly terms or 0.5 per cent in weekly terms in November, and are up 0.8 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively for the 12 months to November.
Can Biden recover?- There are nearly 11 months left before the general election. Economic pessimism may be lifted if there are more months where real wages increase substantially, and this should help Biden if it occurs. Trump faces four separate court trials over alleged election interference after the 2020 election federally and in Georgia, wrongful retention of classified documents after leaving office and hush money payments to a porn star.
Even if he is convicted, Trump can still run for president. But a conviction may hurt Trump's standing in the polls. If Trump won, he could pardon himself of federal charges, but not of the Georgia election interference charges or the hush money charges (this is a New York state case). So the biggest hopes of a Biden recovery are an improvement in economic sentiment before the election and a conviction for Trump. But Biden's age isn't going to improve. Democratic chances of holding the presidency could improve if Biden withdrew and allowed Democrats to select a replacement. (The Conversation)
