The minute Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 election on November 15, 2022, he pretty much guaranteed a second Biden term. This is not prophecy, or fortune-telling, or second sight, or anything of the sort. It’s also not a hope or wishful thinking. It’s simply common sense and simple math (even I can do it!).
Let’s start by assuming that, barring something unforeseen (but see below), Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. There are a number of very good reasons to assume this, all of which we don’t have time to go into right now. But for starters (and, perhaps, to sum up), as of this writing Trump is polling somewhere around 40 points ahead of the next candidate in line. With that kind of crushing lead in the polls, you’d be forgiven for assuming exactly what we are, in fact, assuming. And if we are assuming correctly, it spells defeat for the Republican Party in the general election.
In 2016 Trump won the electoral vote 304 to Hillary Clinton’s 227. Pretty good margin. However, he lost the popular vote 62,984,828 to 65,853,514. In 2020, the electoral vote was almost exactly flipped, with Biden winning it 306 to 232. But Trump lost the popular vote by an even wider margin: 81,283,501 to 74,223,975. So in 2016, before he was president and the country had any idea how he would govern, he lost the popular vote by approximately 3 million votes. But in 2020, after everyone had an opportunity to observe the massive hot mess that was a Trump presidency, he lost the popular vote by approximately 7 million votes — over twice as many disenchanted voters. And that was before the attempted coup on January 6th. Since then he has been indicted four times. Even most Trump supporters will have to admit that, no matter what you think about the insurrection and indictments, they certainly haven’t added voters to his column, and have almost certainly convinced many previously undecided independents that they want nothing to do with this guy, even if it means four more years of Democrat governance.
So what we’ll wind up with is a large portion of the die-hard Republican base voting for Trump, some small but electorally significant portion of the Republican party voting for anybody but Trump (whether that would be Biden or some third-party candidate), and many Republicans staying home because there just aren’t any good options. And while some independents will still vote for Trump over Biden, a substantial portion of independents will wind up voting for Biden because Trump has just become too much of a nightmare to contemplate voting for him. My prediction (and this is just my best guess, so don’t take it to Vegas) is if Trump is the Republican nominee, he’ll get approximately 45 million votes — a loss of more than 10 million votes, and approximately 35% of the popular vote. (If you did the math — and I don’t have any idea why you would have — you would note that I am predicting a lower turnout in 2024 than in 2020. I think many voters will be simply too disgusted with the whole fiasco to bother voting.) I have no idea how that will translate to the electoral vote, but it is impossible to win the electoral vote with less than about 45% of the popular vote. And Trump has already irretrievably lost that.
This is not inevitable, but it will pretty much take an act of God to change it. For instance, if Trump were to mosey off the the great Mar-A-Lago In The Sky, that would obviously allow one of his challengers to unite the Republican vote enough to defeat Biden. He is, after all, 77 years old, which is a respectable age, and quite possibly not living the healthiest of lifestyles (but that’s pure conjecture on my part). I’m not saying I want this to happen (NSA and Secret Service, please take note) — in fact, for reasons entirely unrelated to politics I actually hope this does not happen. I’m just recognizing the possibility.
Alternatively — and I find this much more likely — if Trump is convicted and sentenced to prison, another candidate could wind up being the Republican nominee. But I truly believe that even then, Biden would still win; a vast portion of the Trump army simply will not allow themselves to vote for anyone else as long as their Supreme Leader is alive and spinning conspiracy theories. That would in effect make those folks spoilers, complicit in another Democrat presidency.
Any way it goes, it’s only 4 more years. Only. Four. More. Years.
