Republican supporters can look to national polling in comfort ahead of a presidential election, something they have not had a chance to do in a long, long time. Both in 2020 and 2016, pollsters gave very little chance to President Trump, and President Obama was also ahead of his two Republican opponents, John McCain and Mitt Romney, for the vast majority of time leading up to the 2008 and 2012 elections. George W. Bush was holding a narrow lead against John Kerry, which he ended up materializing—that was in 2004, 20 years ago. People who were born then are now old enough to actually vote in the presidential election themselves.
As of the time of writing this,
Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in the RealClearPolitics polling average by 4.3 percentage points nationally.
That is a hefty lead. Also, the electoral projection on CNN.com puts the Republicans at 272 electoral votes already. That is unusual, as these projections, even if they denote a favourite who is leading the electoral vote, tend to shy away from putting someone over the 270-vote threshold guaranteeing victory. Former President Trump is also the favourite to win the 2024 election among domestic and international bookmakers.
All seems well and good for Republicans.
However, what happened during the 2022 midterm elections may linger with some voters. Two years ago, Republicans were also deemed heavy favourites by election analysts to take over both chambers of Congress, yet the night ended in disappointment for them. While they did win a majority in the House, they did so with a much slimmer margin than originally expected (222–213; while losing a seat since with the expulsion of George Santos), losing districts that the political analytics site FiveThirtyEight gave them a 9:1 chance to win. The GOP also ended up losing a Senate and two governor’s seats (of which they already won back one in the 2023 off-year elections).
Is it possible that the 2024 presidential election will end in a disappointment for Republicans like the 2022 midterms?
There is little chance of that happening. While certain state and district polls were very much off, the national polling average by RCP proved to be remarkably accurate. On election day 2022, it showed Republicans up by 2.5 points in the generic Congress ballot vote, and they ended up winning by 2.8 points. If anything, polling proved to be rather frugal with Republicans once again, since as late as the end of September, Democrats were ahead in the polling average.
Also, there is a crucial fact there: while Republicans ended up underperforming in the midterms, they still did win the national election by a decent margin, 2.8 points.
Senate and gubernatorial elections do not happen in every state at once, so depending on which states happen to hold them in a given year, the Senate and governor maps can favour one party or the other. When a party has to ‘defend’ more (as in, holding onto seats they already have), they have fewer opportunities to gain: this was the case for the Republicans in 2022 as well. Of the 35 seats up for grabs, they already held 20.
In more good news for Republicans: they never led RCP’s ‘survey of surveys’ in 2022 by as much as Trump is leading Biden right now. The largest margin of the lead the GOP had was 4.2 points, which was in May 2022. Also, the 2022 midterms were a series of pure two-way races between Republicans and Democrats.
In 2024, multiple third-party and independent candidates have already announced their run.
Since they tend to be from the left side of the aisle, they will likely take away more votes from Democrats. Former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and liberal Afro-American philosopher and activist Cornel West are running as independents, while the Green Party, viewed as being to the left of the Democratic Party, is nominating Jill Stein again. The Libertarian Party tends to take away voters from Republicans. However, their 2024 candidate, Lars Mapstead, is yet to garner support noticeable in polls. On top of all that, the No Label Party is reportedly considering nominating another former Democrat, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin for POTUS in 2024.
In the five-way race between Biden, Trump, RFK Jr., West, and Stein, Trump is leading the polling aggregate by 7.6 points.
The last two polls by The Messenger/HarrisX and Harvard-Harris, both considered reputable, neutral pollsters, put President Trump’s lead to nine and 11 points, respectively.
No Republican candidate has ever lost the presidential election if they won the popular vote.
A candidate winning the election while losing the popular vote has only happened five times in American history. Since the beginning of the Republican-Democrat two-party system, it has occurred four times, and all four times, the Republican nominee ended up in the White House (or, before 1901, the Executive Mansion). In 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes won in such a way; while in 1888, Benjamin Harrison, in 2000, George W. Bush, and, most recently, Donald J. Trump in 2016 did so.
Related articles:
