December 22, 2023
Home of the Marist Poll
Biden’s Path to Victory
The 2024 Presidential election is now less than a year away, and it looks set to be a rematch between Biden and Trump. For Democrats, the last few months have been angst filled, as several polls show Trump leading Biden both nationally and in key battleground states. Other polls do show Biden with a slight lead, so at this point, it seems the race could go either way.
Biden’s big problem is that he is currently rather unpopular. For the Biden team, this is perplexing. When Biden entered office, 4,000 Americans were dying daily from COVID, the unemployment rate was over 6%, and the nation had just survived the January 6 th assault on the Capitol and attempt to overturn the election.
Rolling Stone
For Biden supporters, it seems that his many successes since entering office have not translated into popularity. His COVID recovery policies got the nation rapidly vaccinated, got people back to work, and has resulted in faster economic growth than other major wealthy nations. Unemployment is now under 4% and over 14 million people have found work. Biden also passed a major infrastructure bill and a program to address global warming by accelerating the transition to green energy. In foreign policy he pulled out of Afghanistan, successfully supported Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion, and expanded NATO. Gasoline prices, after surging to five dollars per gallon in 2022 have dropped to less than three dollars and 25 cents on average.
Despite all that, many people tell pollsters that the economy is doing poorly rather than well. What is causing the sour mood? In a word, inflation. The recovery from the pandemic severely disrupted labor markets and supply chains and led to inflation around the world. In the US, inflation peaked in September 2022 and has been trending lower since. The most recent readings show CPI inflation at about 3% per year, which is not far from the target of 2% inflation the Federal Reserve likes to see. Inflation, in a lot of ways, is worse than recession for a President. During a recession, most people still keep their jobs, but inflation affects everyone, making its damaging impact on public opinion more widespread.
This does not mean that Biden is likely to lose. The key factor is time. There is a delay in how the average citizen perceives economic conditions. The pain of the inflation surge, which raised average prices about 20% between 2019 and 2023, needs to fade into the rear-view mirror. Which is what will happen by next November. Already, gasoline prices have come down dramatically. The labor market remains quite strong and economic growth was over 5% last quarter. If the unemployment rate is under 4% and the inflation rate under 3% next November, Biden will benefit from that environment.
The other factor creating a pessimistic mood among the public is interest rates and the stock market. These factors affect the upper half of society, particularly the wealthy the most. Their view of the economy is what is often presented by and catered to by the business press. To dampen inflation, the Federal Reserve had to raise interest rates from 0 all the way to 5.5% for short-term borrowing. This caused long-term rates like the 10-year bond yield to go to 5%, and mortgage rates for homes and car loan interest rates went up in tandem. Now that inflation appears to be over with, interest rates have already started to come down. And declining interest rates have the effect of raising stock prices, with the Dow Jones and Nasdaq hitting all-time highs just this last week. If stock prices rise strongly in 2024, while interest rates fall, Biden will again benefit.
Biden also has several other cards to play. Abortion is an issue that is going to hurt Trump and help Biden across the swing states. Trump’s recent vow to repeal Obamacare is also a blunder, as Obamacare is now quite popular with voters. Trump has also escalated his rhetoric against immigrants, vowing to deport millions. This will hurt him with Latino voters.
If the economic scenario plays out as expected, Biden should have a favorable electorate in 2024. A strong campaign focusing on abortion, health care, and a rational immigration policy will also help. It is hard to imagine anyone who voted for Biden in 2020 voting for Trump in 2024. Biden could in fact expand his margins by several points to win by 6 or 7 points instead of just 4 in the popular vote.
Trump’s other Achille’s heel is his legal woes. He looks set to lose big in his business fraud case currently underway in New York, and he is facing trial over his attempt to steal the election on January 6, 2020. That trial is set for March. He has the Georgia trial and the confidential documents trial in Florida Federal court sometime later in 2024. To add to that, the Colorado Supreme Court just ruled that he is in fact disqualified from running for President because of his participation in an insurrection under the 14 th Amendment to the Constitution. This last hurdle is going to be rather quickly reviewed by the US Supreme Court, and it will likely overturn the decision. But it is conceivable that the Supreme Court might disqualify Trump, throwing the entire Republican Party into disarray.
