You can take this with a grain of salt, but according to Niall Ferguson, a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, there is a strong possibility that former Donald Trump will emerge the victor in the 2024 presidential election.
In an op-ed for The Spectator, Ferguson argued that “A second Trump act is not just possible. It’s fast becoming my base case.”
Ferguson quickly dismisses the idea that Trump’s legal issues will hurt him because criminal cases against leading political figures often do not hinder their political success. In fact, he observed that they’re already backfiring because of the perception that Democrats are abusing the legal system for political purposes.
As for the primaries, Ferguson notes that Republican candidates that have an early lead in the polls, as Trump does, typically end up the nominee. “Early frontrunners have won Republican primaries in six out of eight competitive races since 1972, when the modern system of primaries was introduced,” he notes. “The two exceptions were John McCain in 2008 and Trump himself in 2016.”
If Donald Trump maintains his current average polling numbers throughout the first half of 2023 but fails to become the Republican Party’s choice for the presidential nomination, he would become the highest-polling candidate ever to be unsuccessful in securing the nomination. So the odds are clearly in his favor.
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As for the general election. Democrats assume that Trump can’t beat Biden — and that’s probably the only reason they’re tolerating nominating a vegetable for president — particularly in light of the results of the 2022 midterms. Of course, while Joe Biden likes to take credit for that, the abortion issue was a much more significant factor than Joe Biden.
But the big problem for Joe Biden is his popularity. His approval ratings have been underwater since the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and he’s even less popular now than Trump was at this point in his first term. Another factor going against Biden is the likelihood of a recession, which tends to end the political hopes of the sitting president or his party.
“If you think the economy isn’t going to be the issue in the 2024 election, I’ve got a Whip Inflation Now badge to sell you,” Ferguson says. “Look at the Gallup poll on ‘satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S’. That’s currently at the 1980 level, half what it was four years ago, before the pandemic. Gallup’s economic confidence index is deeply in negative territory, the opposite of where it was under Trump. And this is before any recession.”
That’s not a good indicator for Joe Biden.
“The lesson of history is clear,” Ferguson writes. “The Republican frontrunner usually wins the nomination, and a post-recession incumbent usually loses the presidential election.”
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