Trump is the early favorite for the 2024 GOP nomination, but even if he isn’t wearing an orange prison jumpsuit by then, he’s unlikely to win over general election voters.
A new AP/NORC poll released on Thursday, April 20, 2023, shows 70% of Americans don’t want him to run for president again. There aren’t that many Democrats; to get to that number, he had to alienate nearly half of Republican voters. (At this point, a rational person will ask, “Why only half?”)
The graph below tells the story. Only 6% of Democrats want him to run (probably because they think he’ll be easy to beat), while 67% of independents say no, and a slim majority (55%) of Republicans say yes to a third Trump bid for the White House. (Read story here, and see complete poll here.)
A striking feature of this poll is that Trump’s “legal issues have [had] little impact on his support,” but that could be because he hasn’t been convicted of anything. It would be interesting to see whether a criminal conviction would cut into his hardcore base, which is about a quarter of the electorate.
Biden, who has a low approval rating in polls, is expected to run again; and some media outlets are talking about a Biden-Trump rematch, which a few polls suggest Biden would lose. If the long-postponed recession many economists expect arrives in the election year, presumably that would be bad for Biden’s re-election prospects; but female anger at the GOP’s attack on abortion rights could overcome that. It was a serious problem for Republicans in the 2022 midterms.
I’ve been watching presidential elections for over 60 years, and all I can say is they’re unpredictable, and it’s way too early to try to read a crystal ball on this one. (And if you have a crystal ball that works, I’d like to know where to get one.) Black swans can affect elections, and there’s more of them swimming around right now than there usually are.
As for me, I think Biden is a savvy politician who knows the terrain, has accomplished a lot domestically and handled foreign relations and especially the Ukraine crisis deftly, is on the right track with China and Taiwan, and I’d hate to see him replaced by a quack politician like Trump even if the latter wasn’t a racist, lawless, lying, crooked autocrat. Competence matters in every job, from janitor and car mechanic to the U.S. presidency, but especially in the latter.
I’d rather see Biden in the White House for another term, and Trump in that orange jumpsuit. But that will be up to my fellow voters; I can only do my little bit with my one vote.
