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Where do things stand in the 2024 presidential race? 


By Colby Etherton 

It’s official: the 2024 presidential election is less than one year away. More likely than not, 2024 is shaping up to be a redux of the 2020 showdown between Biden and Trump, despite a large majority of voters saying that they’d prefer different candidates. While a Republican primary is underway and the field is steadily narrowing, Trump still has a commanding lead for the Republican nomination despite not having attended a single debate. And despite the dozens of criminal charges against Trump, he has steadily gained ground on Biden in several recent polls, even overtaking him in polling in some key battleground states. 

As more alternatives enter the race, namely Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Cornell West, who are both running as independents, and Jill Stein who is running on the Green Party ticket (and whom many feel is a big part of why Hillary Clinton lost the election in 2016), the picture gets muddier for Biden as his winning coalition in 2020 becomes more jeopardized. According to Politico, Biden’s support among young voters has eroded, in part due to his administration’s stance in supporting Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  

Biden is historically unpopular — somehow, even more so than Trump — despite the four-year circus Trump’s administration proved to be. Yet, despite Biden’s unpopularity, Democrats have exceeded expectations in the last several elections. Democrats over-performed in the 2022 midterms, making what many expected to be a red wave a mere red splash. Democrats also did well earlier this November; reproductive rights continued to hold saliency in voters’ minds, with voters enshrining abortion rights into the constitution in Ohio and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear winning reelection primarily campaigning on reproductive rights. However, what these two election cycles since 2020 have in common is that Biden wasn’t on the ballot.  

By all accounts, the Biden administration has done a fairly good job of curbing inflation. Inflation currently stands at about 3.2 percent, down from 7.7 percent last year. There is, nonetheless, concern about Biden’s age that he hasn’t been able to shake off, as well as voter perception that Trump would handle the economy better than Biden.  

Regardless, Biden shows no signs of withdrawing his reelection bid but, should the landscape stay unfavorable for his reelection chances and if he were to hypothetically withdraw his reelection bid, we would be in unprecedented waters. Vice President Kamala Harris would be a long shot considering that she’s even less popular than the president, so we’d be seeing a wide-open field of potential challengers. Most obviously, California Gov. Gavin Newsom would throw his hat in the ring — even going as far as debating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on primetime television.  

On the flip side, should Trump be convicted on any of the dozens of charges he faces, it could potentially alter the course of the Republican primary. DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are still vying for the nomination.  

Stay tuned. 

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