The 2024 Election: What to Expect for the Presidency and Congress
By Ben GIldea
Editor’s Note: This article was written early in the primary season, before any state-wide election took place. So while this piece may not be up to date, it nevertheless provides a unique and holistic view of the 2024 campaign process and what led up to this current point in the political cycle.
It’s 1990 in Louisiana. Incumbent Democratic Senator J. Bennet Johnston is running for reelection after winning his last race 86% to 9%, a whopping 77-point margin. The primary Republican candidate is David Duke, a former leader of the KKK. The idea of him as a Senator is so repulsive that Republican senators begin to endorse Johnston in large numbers. The outcome of the election seems a foregone conclusion. If you guessed the Democratic incumbent won, you’d be right, but not by much. Duke only lost by 10 points, an astronomical 67 percentage point swing towards Republicans. This story reveals two major points: first, how Republicans harness hate to compete in elections, and second, that establishment Republicans aren’t particularly good at winning them, especially when compared to their more rabid counterparts.
Fast forward 34 years to 2024. There are many important things to say about this year, but one of the most important ones is that Biden is a good president. He is not great on every issue and he is not particularly popular, but on the whole, he has been good for the country. He expanded social spending, decreased unemployment, and is leading us through the end of previous inflation. He supported popular social priorities by signing the Respect for Marriage Act into law and supporting choice with the justice department after the Dobbs decision. So, why isn’t he winning?
Listening to many media outlets, you might have gotten the idea that the Republican primary was competitive and that it was full of people more electable than Trump. So, who are these supposedly electable Republicans? Was Chris Christie, who will forever be known for Bridgegate, really a strong candidate when running as – not a joke – the arbiter of the moral high ground? Was Ron Desantis, a near equally divisive, much less charismatic version of Trump, likely to win a general election? Is the supposed crown jewel of electability, Nikki Haley, on track for victory with a campaign platform that actually includes raising the retirement age for social security eligibility? All of these candidates are at their heart and in their history establishment Republicans. So, have establishment Republicans really become electable all of a sudden? In 2012, Romney certainly wasn’t.
If Haley, the last major non-Trump Republican running, were more electable than Trump in any substantial way, it would be expected that the vast majority of polls from the last few months would have shown that, but according to the political website FiveThirtyEight, polls added over that time period testing both candidates in direct matchups against Biden at the state and national level show different best performers. It is also worth noting that Haley has so far been left relatively unscathed by national groups. Yes, her fellow primary hopefuls have attacked her, but that is different from being the focus of the attacks of the national arm of one of our country’s two major political parties. This is probably because Trump’s primary lead (51.7% over Haley in second according to the Real Clear Politics polling average as of January 3rd) is large enough that it is safe to assume Haley will never win the nomination.
Yes, it is possible that she could win. Maybe her status as the last of the non-Trump candidates allows her to leverage more media coverage and come in strong in South Carolina. Maybe she uses this finish and the resulting Wall Street money to somehow, someway eat into Trump’s massive leads in other states. Maybe it is just enough for her to win. Trump could also just die or be convicted of a crime in a particularly damning way and leave her the nominee. Regardless, those are long odds, and the one thing it is relatively safe to assume if you are in charge of Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign is that Haley will not be the Republican presidential nominee. As a result, she has never had to face true national scrutiny and it is relatively easy to imagine that she would get ripped to shreds if ever she becomes the target of all the Democratic campaign infrastructure in the country. After all, a Republican promising social security cuts is probably the best Biden campaign gift anyone could give.
So, if Trump is polling relatively equally with Haley against Biden and he has faced attacks for many years, it is probably safe to assume he is more electable. Now we can argue that the words electable and Trump (perhaps even just the word Republican) shouldn’t belong in the same sentence, but that doesn’t mean they don’t. David Duke shouldn’t have gotten close to winning a senate seat, but he did. Donald Trump, another hateful Republican candidate outperforming their establishment, shouldn’t get another term, but he might. In fact, considering that Trump is, on average, leading in national polls, there might even be an unfortunately large chance it could happen. However, there are reasons for hope.
One of the worst polls for Biden that has been released was conducted by the New York Times, usually considered a relatively reliable polling firm. It showed, out of all the swing states, Biden doing the best in … Wisconsin. Now if you remember wildly inaccurate polls from 2020 showing Biden winning Wisconsin by double digits when he ended up barely winning there and winning by more in Pennsylvania and Michigan, it is easy to see why this poll should trigger skepticism.
Furthermore, this poll showed Biden doing better among some older voter groups than with young voters. This, frankly, is almost certainly wrong, especially given the context of other polls showing quite different results for this demographic and the context of the last midterm elections, in which Democrats overperformed in large part due to sweeping young voters. This poll is a good example of polling many months out from the election: useful, but important to take with a grain of salt. It is a close race! If all polls showed large Trump leads, there would be cause for concern, but they don’t. If the economic news stays as good as it has been recently (and it has been good: unemployment is near record lows and any excess inflation receding into history), it is hard not to imagine Biden’s position improving.
Some political trends also give reason for hope. From 2016 to now, Republicans have won exactly one partisan statewide election in Michigan, Trump’s 2016 victory. On the whole, Michigan is one of the few swing states in the country to consistently favor the Democratic party. Now Trump’s unfortunate tendency to overperform there notwithstanding, Michigan should not be a hard lift. Similarly, Pennsylvania posted good results for Democrats in the midterms and thus should be potentially a state-friendly to Biden. The results from Nevada and Wisconsin were more mixed, but statewide Democratic victories in a year with a massive Republican turnout advantage lay the groundwork for a Biden victory in those states, especially in a presidential election year. Note that the Rust Belt states plus New Hampshire and either Nevada or the Omaha congressional district get Biden to 270 electoral votes, so Biden certainly has a strong path to victory.
With the Presidential election so dramatic in 2024, the down-ballot often gets ignored, but it is equally if not more important. The class of senators that contains 23 of the 51 members of the senate Democratic caucus is up for election, making a tough 2024 Senate map. Unfortunately, there are only two reasonable pickup opportunities for Democrats, Texas, and Florida, and neither is very likely to flip to our hands without a national landslide. Furthermore, since Joe Manchin is retiring, the West Virginia seat is almost guaranteed to flip to Republicans. Since the Senate Democratic caucus currently stands at 51 members, this pegs the likely ceiling of post-election seats at 50, implying that if Biden loses the election, Republicans almost certainly flip the Senate. However, the existence of legislators like Manchin shows that Democratic senators have a history of beating the odds.
So, if Biden does win, flipping a Republican senate seat is potentially manageable. For example, taking the Florida senate seat away from Rick Scott, who barely won in 2018 and since then has tried to sunset Medicare, is within the realm of possibility despite Florida’s rightward drift. And despite the likely ceiling being 50 senators, there isn’t a huge chance of going much below that. Two key seats Democrats hold, Ohio and Montana, are at risk, but other seats are much safer.
In Ohio, Sherrod Brown is simultaneously one of the most progressive senators in the country and one the most successful working-class populists, allowing him to be the lone statewide elected Democrat to survive the Trump era in Ohio thus far. In Montana, Jon Tester has the reddest state to run for reelection in of any Democratic incumbent. However, according to a Morning Consult poll taken late last year, Tester has a 61% approval rating and is the fourth most popular senator in the country, giving him a shot of outrunning Biden by enough to be reelected.
There are several other seats that Republicans are targeting this cycle, but most have strong incumbents. A few are of note. In Arizona, the chaos of Kyrsten Sinema becoming an independent appears likely to result in the election of a Democrat whether or not she runs due to Republicans nominating Kari Lake when Democrats have a viable candidate. In Michigan, strong candidate Elissa Slotkin should be able to win the open seat in anything short of a Republican wave. Lastly, in Nevada, Jacky Rosen might be vulnerable if Democrats do particularly poorly in the state. However, it is reasonable to expect Democrats to hold all these seats, meaning there is a likely floor of 48 Democratic senate seats as long as Democrats do at worst somewhat poorly.
The good news here is that even if things do go a little poorly, Republicans will likely struggle to pass conservative legislation more controversial than a tax cut through the Senate. (Remember their attempts to repeal the ACA in 2017?) This is especially true because Manchin and most likely Sinema will not serve another term, depriving Republicans of their best prospects for conservative Democratic votes on bills.
Out of the House, the Presidency, and the Senate, the House may be the easiest lift for Democrats. Republicans currently have 220 seats compared to 213 sitting Democrats and two vacant seats. Although the House almost never flips in presidential election years, the narrow Republican lead provides hope. Our party only needs to win 5 more seats to win a majority and there have been several favorable developments, from redistricting to a likely improvement in Democratic turnout in 2024.
Redistricting will probably play one of the largest roles in determining control of the house. Although fair maps in North Carolina have been thrown out in order to be replaced with a Republican gerrymander that will likely flip at least 3 seats, it will probably not net them more than 4 seats, despite replacing an 8-6 Republican favoring map – with the least red Republican-leaning seat currently held by a Democrat – with a lopsided Republican advantage in the state. (All explicit partisan identifications of current congressional districts listed in this article are from the Cook Partisan Voting Index.) Republicans are mainly able to do this because they flipped the state supreme court in 2022. However, according to Politico, new redistricting will advantage Democrats in New York and The South.
Due to recent appointments by the new governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, Conservatives opposed to Democratic maps have lost control of New York’s high court to more liberal judges. Democrats currently have control of 15 of the 26 New York House districts, with 10 Republicans and one seat vacant, quite a terrible performance for our party in such a big and blue state.
However, this is with a court map imposed after Democrats in state government unsuccessfully attempted to draw favorable maps when New York’s independent redistricting commission failed to produce a single one acceptable to a majority of the commission. (New York is one of the few Democratic states in the country with the opportunity to draw favorable maps; asking them not to draw favorable maps makes the national house map more, not less, directionally biased from gerrymandering, largely due to extreme Republican maps across the south.)
Luckily, the court map, which was drawn much more favorably to Republicans than the map that the legislature proposed, is not long for this world. It was thrown out by the more liberal court and Democratic legislators will have the opportunity to draw again. If the last legislature-drawn map is a guide, it could favor Democrats in as many as 21 or 22 of the 26 districts. It is worth noting, however, that this is not necessarily a 7 seat improvement since the 2022 midterms were quite bad for New York Democrats and more seats currently favor them than they represent. (The current map favors Democrats in 19 Districts, with 1 evenly divided, which is reflective of New York’s status as a deep blue state. However, several of these districts barely lean towards Democrats.) A new potential map should thus be expected to be responsible for a 2 to 3 seat Democratic gain on top of shifts caused by other factors.
Lastly, on the subject of redistricting, a ruling from the Supreme Court will force several southern states to give black people more representation and could create as many as 2-3 more Democratic districts (1 in Louisiana, 1 in Alabama, and maybe potentially 1 in Florida). In totality, if all this redistricting occurs as expected, which it most likely will, Democrats may be looking at a gross gain of 4-6 seats and a net gain of 0-3 seats from redistricting alone, potentially accounting for more than half of the seats needed to take the majority. It is also worth noting that things could get even better by a seat or two if Wisconsin’s newly Liberal-leaning supreme court throws out a Republican-gerrymandered congressional map, but it is unclear if this will actually happen before the 2024 election.
The second important factor in determining control of the house is turnout. In 2022 Republicans had a landslide turnout advantage (were more likely to vote than Democrats) and were only stymied by the appeal of Democratic candidates. This turnout problem was especially acute in New York, the state that is arguably most responsible for Democrats losing the house in 2022. 2024 is a presidential election and although Republicans tend to have a consistent turnout advantage (older voters vote more often), it will likely be significantly smaller during a presidential election year, especially in the places where it hurt Democrats the worst in the midterms, namely New York and some places in California.
There are 4 pick-up opportunities that lean towards Democrats in New York alone, even before accounting for redistricting. It will be significantly harder for Republicans to hold all these districts in a higher turnout election. The same can be said of two Democratic-leaning Central Valley districts held by Republicans and one outer LA district, as well as districts all across America, with the exception of the Rust Belt, where Democratic turnout generally matched Republican turnout in 2022, when Trump was not on the ballot.
A third aspect to consider is the likelihood of voters to ticket split. Trump has effectively been divisive enough to send ticket-splitting to an all-time low. The reason that this is bad for Democrats is that ticket-splitting has historically generally been in the favor of popular local Democratic politicians. For example, in 2018, Democrats really should not have lost Senate seats. Yes, the Senate map was terrible, but it was the same Senate map as 2012 and the electorate was arguably bluer.
One reason for this terrible loss was a massive decline in ticket-splitting after Trump assumed the presidency. The good news here is that after Biden won, the trend reversed itself a bit, and ticket-splitting rebounded somewhat in 2022, helping to allow for the surprisingly close midterm. If the ticket-splitting in 2024 looks more like 2022 or 2016 than the elections in which Trump held the bully pulpit, it could allow a favorable house outcome even if Biden loses or buoy Democrats beyond expectations if Biden wins.
On the whole there are a number of reasons to be optimistic about the house, but we cannot forget the national environment. If it is a very Democratic year, we will win the body anyway, and if it is a very Republican year, they will likely win it regardless. However, if 2024 is close, we have reason to be optimistic. It is worth noting that it is unlikely to be coincidental that the House is the country’s most democratic and Democratic institution.
Since the 1932 election, the Democratic party has held Republicans to just 8 years of continuous federal government trifecta power and 2 more years of intermittent trifecta government, but all except two of these years have been in the 21st century. Each of these modern periods of complete Republican control of government has left scars: the Iraq war, an attempt to privatize social security, the 2008 recession, and almost losing the Affordable Care Act. So it is good that most of the period between 1932 and today has seen Democratic trifectas alternating with divided government. When Biden promised a return to normalcy, this is the normal that Americans mourn. There are certainly parallels between the Biden administration’s economic successes and those of Democrats in the first half of the 20th century. The 2022 rebound in ticket-splitting has provided an encouraging sign of progress on Biden’s goal. With the efforts of Democrats all around the country, Biden may just be able to deliver on his promise and usher in a new decade in America’s era of progress under our Democratic Party.