Well that might just give for some hope, there ain’t no rules in a knife fight
No way is it that low. Millions of voters will have turned 18 from 2020 to 2024. A non-negligible fraction of those would vote for Trump. Millions of voters will also have died–and those would have voted for Trump in higher numbers than the newly 18. Everybody else gets 4 years older, and 4 years is long enough to get just a little more conservative–not to mention get indoctrinated into QAnon or some other cult.
There are always people on the margin, and the population that votes in one year is not the population that votes in another year. There are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who were just a little too skeptical of Trump in 2020, got a little more conservative over the next 4 years, maybe aren’t too happy with Biden, and would vote for Trump in 2024. And some other large number that went the other way. Impossible to say now how that flow balances out.
I’ve seen this kind of claim before and don’t know what to make of it.
What would be the election equivalent of the Democrats using the tools that allegedly lead to Republican victory?
Lying? It will be hard to beat Trump at this, but Biden does his share.
Gerrymandering? Democrats are pretty good at that one. See also The Gerrymander Myth.
Or maybe the idea is plain old vote-buying. Is it?
One other question. Given that the Democrats and Republicans both win about half the time, why would emulating the Republicans help in determining who wins next year?
Yes but I specifically said I wasn’t talking about any voters who turned eighteen since 2020. Other than that I stand by what I wrote. The margin exists but it’s moved away from Trump. He’s lost voters he had in 2020 and 2016 and hasn’t gained any new voters (other than the eighteen year olds).
That might be tidy, conventional thinking.
But that’s the same logic which couldn’t fathom that Trump could pick up +/- 10 million votes in 2020.
Have no dog directly in the fight, but are you betting that 81mil votes for Biden will be sufficient in 2024?
I would have thought yes myself. But then I thought 70mil were sufficient in 2020.
Sorry, yeah, I missed your earlier comment.
Still, I think you underestimate how people can change in 4 years. The effect may be small for any one person, but statistically, the effect can be large enough to be relevant. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see such a consistent R/D split year after year, despite the fact that the incoming youth votes more liberal than the dying elderly. Everyone in between gets just a little more conservative and a little more likely to vote that way. It doesn’t always take much.
There is pressure in the other direction, of course. But it doesn’t affect everyone the same way. There will be flows in either direction of thousands or millions of votes. Even if the final delta is small, it doesn’t mean that no one switched. It just means the people that switched are balanced.
I agree with all that. The only thing that keeps Trump from running is a heart attack or stroke bad enough that he can’t function. But since he’s a big fat florid man approaching 80 who eats junk food and only ‘exercises’ by getting out of his golf cart and walking to his ball, while being in a very stressful legal situation, the odds of him having a serious medical episode in the next year are not small. And there is some chance that he will be jailed or kept off the ballot in some way.
Biden does not look well to me, his approval rating is in the tank, the economy is getting worse, and he’s an old man. 75% of the country thinks he is too old to run, and 61% think he’s corrupt. His own imeachment is on the table, along with his son’s trial. In a normal election season, Biden would be facing pressure to step down, and might be forced to by his health.
So the numbers I gave were just my estimate, and could be wrong. But at least you understand my reasoning.
This is not a comparison of Biden vs Trump in any normative way. It’s just my take on the factors that might lead either or both of them to quit the race or drop out for medical reasons.
Here is a CNN poll backing up the numbers for corruption:
This is going off topic but do we really know that Trump picked up ten million votes? It’s public record that he tried to falsify vote counts after he realized he didn’t have enough votes to win. And he’s constantly accused Biden of stealing the election - and historically when Trump accuses other people of doing something wrong, it means he did it.
So I speculate that Trump tried to steal the 2020 election with a false vote count. But in typical Trump fashion, he did a half-assed job of it. It was only when he started seeing the returns that he realized he hadn’t stolen enough votes and tried to go back and steal some more.
I’m.not sure I should agree with you on the 61%. It involves a bit of reading into how people answered a poll concerning something they may never have thought about before. Here is that poll:
When asked in a free-response manner, Americans were 2.5 times more likely to say that Trump is corrupt, crooked, or a criminal as with Biden:
Scroll down to “the public associated Biden with age but Trump with crime”
Does that tell us why Trump is viable? I’d say no. What tells me Trump is not just viable, but a bit ahead in the general election race, is the polls where people are asked who they are planning to vote for. Millions of Americans are planning to vote for Trump, even though they’ll also tell a pollster they disapprove of him even more than they disapprove of Biden.
I’m more worried that Hunter will lose.
No, 61% did not think Joe was corrupt, 61% thought he had something to do with Hunters business dealings.
But also 44% of the people think that any Dem would be a better choice than trump, with only 38% thinking trump would be okay.
And, true a lot of people would like to see someone besides Joe Biden, no other choice got more than 5%. In other words, Biden is still the favorite choice. And polls show every other Dem losing vs trump.
Unfortunately to me, Harris polls poorly against Trump. However, I don’t think voters have made up their minds there as they have done on Biden-Trump. I haven’t seen polls for, seen Trump-Whitmer. But if Whitmer pols poorly, it is due to lack of name recognition. Once nominated, you are famous, and low name recognition is no longer any problem.
Here is some good news for Biden:
Running as a complete independent, West will gain ballot access in few states, And without a celebrity candidate like West, the Green ticket will get few votes.
Please pardon my snip.
I think that it is all about the question of turnout. In 2020, anyone who cared at all came out and voted (sadly not as many as who should have cared, but that’s another thread). Trump supporters and Trump haters alike.
In 2024, Trump lovers are still there, and still (the loud ones, which is what we always hear of course) as obsessed with their Chosen One 
. But plenty of Democrats and others are sad, tired, and underwhelmed with Biden. Rationally, there was only so much he could do in front of an unspeakably obstinate House and such narrow margins in the Senate, but the fatigue is real nonetheless.
And sure, I do think there will be fewer Trump voters, some still support him verbally but don’t want him back, some will believe it’ll be “fixed” again and not vote, and some maybe just can’t be bothered.
But if I had to -guess- at this early stage in things, that the support for Trump among those who will be bothered to go out and vote is higher than the energy and enthusiasm generated by and for Biden. I do think the Democrats need to be less hopeful that the lawsuits will put Trump away and in the near future (don’t want to peak too soon) and focus energy on making sure anyone who leans Democratic remember how important it is to go out there and vote against Trump rather than in support of Biden.
As I said, Trump is a genius at inspiring that hate, and rather than Biden’s fundamental sanity and blandness, it’ll be easier to get enthusiasm and VOTES to keep Trump out of office than keep Biden in it.
That’s why I feel Biden might lose to any other Republican. But not against Trump. If Trump is the nominee, he’ll once again bring out the anti-Trump vote. People who might otherwise vote for a Republican or a third party candidate or just stay home will show up to vote against Trump.
I have no argument with that @Little_Nemo, I’ve said similar things in other threads as well, which is why I was agreeing with @Dr.Drake’s point that it’s all about turnout, and that hate of Trump is much more likely to drive Democrat turnout than love of Biden.
I agree. Despite the current polls I can’t bring myself to worry too much about Trump winning. He couldn’t beat Biden when he was President, how is he going to beat him while standing trial for an array of felonies? As the campaign and the trials drag on, swing voters will be reminded of how much they dislike this guy.
No, Joe would cream any other Repub.
I feel there may be some misunderstanding (perhaps on my part). My interpretation of what Dr. Drake wrote is that he feels new Trump voters - those who have not voted for Trump in previous elections - will be a significant factor. And if I’m correct in that interpretation, I disagree with it. I feel there is no pool of new Trump voters out there (barring the young voters who weren’t able to vote for Trump in 2020). The only people Trump can expect to have vote for him in 2024 are those who voted for him in 2020 - and not even all of those. And that amount of voters was not enough to get him elected.
Putting aside January 6 and Trump’s legal problems, there’s the Pence factor. I think it’s safe to say that Trump won’t select Pence as his running mate again (and Pence wouldn’t accept if he did). Pence was able to tap into Christian conservative voters, who were willing to overlook Trump’s faults to get one of their own into the administration. Trump will have a hard time reaching those voters without Pence. And I don’t see Trump choosing a different Christian conservative running mate to replace Pence.
My thought was that people who didn’t get off their asses to vote in 2016 or 2020 might nevertheless do so in 2024, without changing their minds about any candidate. In other words, even if you assume the absolute number of Trump voters is declining, the number of actual voters in key states might still increase.
Meanwhile, D voters who are lacklustre about Biden might not bother, and, again, a comparatively small number of non-voters could have an outsized effect in our screwy system.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. Or disagree about disagreeing.
But I still feel that anyone who wasn’t motivated to vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020 won’t be motivated to vote for him in 2024. And plenty of people who were motivated to vote for him in 2016 and 2020 will have felt their motivation has diminished and won’t vote for him in 2024.
On the other hand, January 6 and Trump’s trials will ensure that the anti-Trump voters will have their motivation as high as it was in 2020.
I’ll even go on record with my prediction. The 2020 official vote count was 81,283,501 for Biden and 74,223,975 votes for Trump. If those two are the nominees in 2024, I’m predicting Biden will get over 82,000,000 and Trump will fall below 71,000,000. I also predict Biden will increase the seventy-four electoral college vote lead he had in 2020.