WASHINGTON — With a Biden vs. Trump rematch likely, polls forecast another close election.
That’s no surprise — four of the last six presidential elections have been tight — and except for a few brief stretches, Congress has also been closely divided for more than two decades.
Trying to guess who will win this far ahead of the voting is a fool’s game. But we can predict these four questions will go a long way toward determining the results.
Will voter turnout drop?
Since a low point in 1996, voter turnout in U.S. elections has generally risen as the differences between the two parties have grown. The Trump presidency put that trend into overdrive: The share of the U.S. adult population who voted in 2020 was the largest in history — roughly two-thirds of potentially eligible adults.
Because the overall turnout was so large, President Biden’s victory was also historic: In winning, he got support from a larger share of the U.S. population than President Reagan won in his landslide reelection in 1984.
But high turnout in the Trump era cuts both ways. Republican turnout soared as well. The former president inspires his supporters, enrages his foes and motivates both sides to show up.
Will that persist? So far, the evidence suggests we’re headed to a decline from the record levels of the last election. Young voters don’t seem as interested as their counterparts did in 2020. And polls show Biden suffering from soft support among Black and Latino voters.
The big questions are how much does turnout drop, where does it happen and which side is affected more.
Given the size of the coalition Biden put together in 2020, he can afford some erosion, especially in big Democratic states like California and New York — much as President Obama was able to win reelection in 2012 despite a significant decline in turnout from 2008. But Biden can’t afford to lose many voters in battleground states, several of which were close last time.
Republicans are at risk, too, however. Many of former President Trump’s older, less educated, rural supporters have spotty voting records. By contrast, the college-educated suburbanites — whose support Democrats increasingly rely on — are very persistent voters.
Generations of Democrats grew up believing that high turnout always helps their side. It’s time to retire that myth — in current American politics, high turnout is much more of a jump ball.
Will voters begin to feel better about the economy?
One of the most striking features of 2023 was the sharp divergence between the picture of the economy painted by statistics (one of the best) and the view of most Americans (one of the worst).
Theories abound over the reason for the gap — I wrote about several of the leading possibilities in November. Most guesses involve the lingering impact of the high inflation the U.S. endured in 2022 and early 2023, compounded by partisanship and the psychological trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whatever the explanation, however, the grim view of the economy has been a big part of Biden’s slump over the past year. A huge question for his reelection is whether voters will begin to feel better about the economy if inflation remains low in 2024 and the Federal Reserve begins to lower interest rates as expected.
There’s some evidence that consumer views have started to warm. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index improved in December, for example. A second measure of consumers’ mood, the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment, showed improvements in Americans’ views of current economic conditions and their own personal finances, although expectations for future business conditions declined.
Three decades ago, President Clinton’s strategist, James Carville, declared, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That’s still true to a large extent, even if the number of swing voters has sharply declined since then.
Economic conditions will be especially crucial for one big group — Democrats who have soured on Biden. The most recent YouGov poll for the Economist, for example, found Trump and Biden deadlocked in a hypothetical matchup. A big reason why: 15% of Biden’s 2020 voters said they don’t currently plan to vote for him again. Improving views of the economy could bring a lot of those voters home.
How will voters view Trump’s legal problems?
A majority of Americans say Trump is guilty of criminal conduct in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A Washington Post/University of Maryland poll released Wednesday found 56% of Americans saying he’s definitely or probably guilty, compared to 33% who say he’s definitely or probably innocent.
A jury may get to offer its verdict before the election. Trump’s legal team, however, has pursued multiple efforts to delay any of the four criminal trials he faces — two in federal court, one in state court in Georgia and one in New York. They likely will succeed in delaying the election conspiracy trial, which is currently slated to start on March 4.
Still, there’s a good chance that at least one of the trials will take place this year. If Trump is convicted, how will voters react?
Trump’s core supporters won’t abandon him, no matter what. But several polls, including a recent Wall Street Journal survey, suggest that a small but significant number of voters who back Trump would peel away from him.
People are notoriously bad at predicting how they would react to something they haven’t experienced, but even in these highly partisan times, it seems likely that some Americans would balk at voting for a convicted felon.
Can Biden convince voters he’s up to the job?
In 2020, Biden capitalized on voters’ perception that Trump’s presidency was chaos. Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic helped hugely in that endeavor.
This time, Trump hopes to pin the chaos label on his successor. Republicans point repeatedly to troubles at the border even as they block policies the administration has proposed to try to deal with it.
They’ve also stoked Americans’ fear of crime. And Trump tells audiences that if he were president, neither the war in Ukraine nor the one in the Middle East would be happening.
Some of the GOP claims contradict reality: Crime has dropped sharply, for example. In 2023, homicides nationwide had one of the steepest declines ever.
But the chaos argument isn’t really about facts, it’s about the feeling many voters have that the country is on the wrong track and that Biden is not up to the job. More than anything, the election may turn on whether Biden can dispel that impression.
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