Things are looking up for The Don

Good morning! In 2024, 40 countries will hold national elections. These countries account for 41% of the planet’s population and 42% of global gross domestic product, per Bloomberg. India and the US are the biggest democracies that will choose new leaders or retain old ones. It will be the third term for Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, should he lead his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, to a hattrick. In the US, meanwhile. President Joe Biden is most likely to bid for continuation. It is highly probable that Biden will face off with former President Donald Trump on November 5, 2024, and… lose. That will be the beginning of another tumultuous period for the world.

If you enjoy reading us, why not give us a follow at @thesignaldotco on Twitter, Instagram, and Threads.

Adrian Beaumont

The United States general election will be held on November 5 2024. In early 2024, there are Democratic and Republican presidential nominating contests that will elect delegates to the parties’ nominating conventions. These conventions, in July (for Republicans) and August (Democrats) officially select their parties’ presidential candidates.

The first contest is the Iowa Republican caucus on January 15, followed by the New Hampshire primary for both parties on January 23. There are several other contests in February before many states vote on “Super Tuesday”, March 5. The early contests account for a low percentage of total delegates, with under 10% of delegates determined by the Michigan primary on February 27.

A “caucus” is managed by the state party, and often requires voters to gather at a particular time. A “primary” is managed by the state’s electoral authority, and is administered in the same way as a general election. Turnout at primaries is much higher than at caucuses. In 2024, the large majority of contests use primaries.

Democratic delegates are allocated proportionally with a 15% threshold. Republican delegate allocation depends on the state: some states allocate delegates proportionally, but many others allocate delegates winner takes all or winner takes most.

In FiveThirtyEight polling aggregates, former president Donald Trump is way ahead in national Republican primary polls with 61.7%, followed by Ron DeSantis at 12.2% and Nikki Haley at 11.3%. Trump is also dominant in Iowa with 46.7%, followed by DeSantis at 19.6% and Haley at 15.0%.

If the election results reflect these national polls, Trump will win a huge majority of delegates.

On the Democratic side, no prominent Democrat has challenged President Joe Biden. Biden has 65.8% nationally with Marianne Williamson on 7.6% and Dean Phillips on 5.4%.

Trump leads in general election polls

In the presidential general election, there are 538 electoral votes and it takes 270 to win. Electoral votes are assigned to states as the sum of their House seats (population based) and senators (always two), so the lowest-population states have three EVs. With two minor exceptions, states award their EVs as winner-takes-all.

Trump won the 2016 election despite losing the national popular vote by 2.1%. In 2020, Biden won the popular vote by 4.5% but only won the state that gave him over 270 EVs by 0.6%. It’s likely Trump will benefit again from the skew in the electoral votes.

Biden’s FiveThirtyEight national ratings are 55.6% disapprove, 38.3% approve (net -17.3). His ratings have been sliding since March, when he was at net -7.3. Trump’s ratings are 52.3% unfavourable, 42.3% favourable (net -9.9). His ratings have improved since August when he was at -18.1.

Biden trails Trump by low- to mid-single digits in most national polls, and this doesn’t factor in the likely electoral vote skew. Trump’s margin over Biden increases slightly when third party candidates are included.

By the general election, Biden will be almost 82 and Trump 78. Early November Siena polls for The New York Times gave Trump four-to-ten-point leads in five of the six closest 2020 Biden-won states.

While Trump led overall by five points in the Siena polls, an unnamed generic Democrat led Trump by eight. In a similar exercise a year before the 2020 election, Biden led Trump by two and a generic Democrat led by three. This implies replacing Biden with a far younger Democrat would enhance their hopes of beating Trump.

Economic pessimism is helping Trump

In an early December national Wall Street Journal poll, two-thirds rated the economy poor or not good, and two-thirds said it had become worse in the past two years, during Biden’s tenure. Trump led Biden by 52–35 on best to handle the economy. By 53–23, voters thought Biden’s policies had hurt rather than helped them personally, while they thought Trump’s policies had helped by 49–37.

US headline and core inflation were about 2% annually before COVID, but the headline inflation peaked at 8.9% in June 2022. While inflation has dropped to 3.1% in November, voters still remember that goods and services used to be much cheaper.

Real (inflation-adjusted) wages were up 0.2% in hourly terms or 0.5% in weekly terms in November, and are up 0.8% and 0.5% respectively for the 12 months to November.

The personal savings rate was 3.8% in October. Prior to COVID, savings were over 5%, and they surged to record levels during the pandemic owing to stimulus payments and lack of spending opportunities. But the effects of inflation have eroded those gains.

The US jobs numbers have continued to be solid, with 199,000 jobs added in November and an unemployment rate of 3.7%. The employment population ratio – the percentage of eligible Americans employed – was 60.5% in November. It has nearly returned to where it was before the COVID pandemic began (61.1%).

Can Biden recover?

There are nearly 11 months left before the general election. Economic pessimism may be lifted if there are more months where real wages increase substantially, and this should help Biden if it occurs.

Trump faces four separate court trials over alleged election interference after the 2020 election federally and in Georgia, wrongful retention of classified documents after leaving office and hush money payments to a porn star.

Even if he is convicted, Trump can still run for president. But a conviction may hurt Trump’s standing in the polls. If Trump won, he could pardon himself of federal charges, but not of the Georgia election interference charges or the hush money charges (this is a New York state case).

So the biggest hopes of a Biden recovery are an improvement in economic sentiment before the election and a conviction for Trump. But Biden’s age isn’t going to improve.

Democratic chances of holding the presidency could improve if Biden withdrew and allowed Democrats to select a replacement. For this to happen, Biden would need to withdraw before the Democratic convention on August 19–22 2024.

Adrian Beaumont is Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from https://theconversation.com under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article at https://theconversation.com/us-elections-2024-a-biden-vs-trump-rematch-is-very-likely-with-trump-leading-biden-219093 

ICYMI

Eulogy for Twitter: Yes, one refuses to call it X and always will. In this delightful compendium of stories on and about Twitter, The Verge writers observe what made the social platform the online nucleus of political and cultural relevance. In Extremely Softcore, Zoe Schiffer interviews some of Twitter’s earliest and longest-serving staffers to figure out why the company was a cut above the others in Silicon Valley. The Great Scrollback Of Alexandria is a time sink of the best (funniest) tweets since the site’s inception. Sarah Jeong revisits her not-so-great experience on Twitter in Goodbye To All That Harassment, while Nilay Patel hits bullseye in identifying what made the platform so great for journalists and news media; as he puts it, “No one chasing money in media ever chased Twitter. But anyone chasing power found themselves irresistibly drawn to the platform.”

All stories in this series are a visual delight, replete with kooky illustrations and interactive elements that make each longread shine. Don’t miss this series for the world.

The when, not if split: Over the last 18 months or so, several reports and deep dives have surfaced about the partitioning of the Jain family, the owners of The Times Group. The proposed split of the empire, while formalised and yet to be executed, has been a complex give and take within the family, particularly its feuding brothers—Samir and Vineet Jain. This story in The Caravan pieces it all together, going back in time to the several tumults in the Old Lady of Boribunder, and how that has led to the events of today. The crux of the split, however, lies in the differing philosophies of the brothers: one stoically holding on to the vastly-influential print properties, while the other taking over the highly-monetisable digital and television parts of the empire. Further reading: How Samir Jain created the modern Indian newspaper industry (2012) and Citizens Jain (2012). Staying with the media, we’d also recommend this op-ed in The Economist on how The New York Times lost its way, written by its former op-ed editor James Bennet.

Collector’s edition: What is it with the Japanese & collectibles? After rare Pokemon cards and beautiful manhole covers, Japan’s latest offering in collectibles are Kikkoman soy sauce bottles. Known for its intuitive designs and amazing taste, Kikkoman has become a staple in Japanese cuisine. Surprisingly though, Kikkoman is a much bigger brand in the US than in Japan. Over the years, it has grown from being an ‘exotic’ seasoning to a mainstay for Americans returning from wars in Asian countries. Now, it’s pivoting to attract younger customers through collectibles, limited edition bottles and designer collaborations. On its 60th anniversary, Kikkoman also invited select customers to design their own bottles. All of these efforts have led to skyrocketing customer demand, with some rare bottles fetching up to $300. To find out more about Kikkoman’s hold over the US, read this story in Eater. 

The bots are here: We’ve all heard it by now, AI will disrupt the way entire industries function. With every new rendition of a Large Language Model (LLM), it seems to come closer to delivering on that front.  But is it, though? That’s the question Erick Hoel asks in this edition of his newsletter, The Intrinsic Perspective. Hoel proposes a supply paradox of AI: the easier it is to train AI to do something, the less economically valuable that thing is IRL. That’s why the latest and greatest of LLMs today seem to be a threat to the lowest hanging fruit. Think freelancing, writing, digital art, etc. In that case, does the insane cost of making such LLMs justify these high costs? And before you roll your eyes and say, “iT’ll OnLy gEt BeTteR”, hold your horses. There’s tons of nuance and evidence to show that despite the advancements, there’s reason to be cautious about AI’s economic possibilities. 

An old-fashioned white knight: JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon has built a reputation of being Wall Street’s ultimate saviour. Someone who can not only come to the aid of small banks facing a run on its deposits but also rescue the financial system itself. He outshines even a predecessor who straddled the Street more than a century ago. JP Morgan, actually JP Morgan Chase, is now the biggest US bank with a reputation of being the safest too. It has more than $4 trillion in assets and made a profit of $51 billion last year. This Intelligencer essay describes what Dimon has built over the past 17 years as CEO with one eye on risk and another on scale. Capping his reign would be the under construction $3 billion skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan which will be the bank’s global headquarters. It “already has ego”, writes Gary Sernovitz, the author of the piece.

The spy who loved commies: If you met a raging MAGA Republican who spent decades serving in the US’ security establishment (including as the head of US Interests section in Cuba), what would you expect their politics to be? Surely not that of a Communist deeply sympathetic to Fidel Castro. But Victor Manuel Rocha, career US diplomat, was exactly that. Rocha was convicted for espionage this week for spying on the US on Cuba’s behalf for over 40 years. What’s more: he may not have done it for money, but for the cause. Cuba has a history of canvassing the best American universities and grad schools for young students ideologically aligned to its cause. It cultivates them patiently as spies, helping them climb to the top of US defence agencies. This Politico story + interview sketches the skill with which the tiny, overlooked island nation cultivates spies deep within the US, extracting top-level classified information, and selling it to American adversaries such as Russia. The worst part: the US is spread so thin balancing its many friends and enemies that it may remain crappy at intercepting Cuba’s intelligence ops.