2024 US Presidential Election

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Thought we should have a thread on it, as Ron DeSantis is expected to launch his campaign on Twitter this evening. He's trailing Trump by a big margin for the Republican nomination, around 37% behind in the polling average. But there's a lot of time for things to change and the oddsmakers only have DeSantis as a 2/1 outsider, against Trump's 2/5. Doesn't appear to be any other serious contenders for the Republican nomination at this point.

Biden is expected to run again and defend his crown, but his advancing age (he's into his 80s now) and low approval ratings means he may be vulnerable to a Democratic challenger. The most likely challenger seems to be Robert Kennedy Jr. who has already announced his candidacy and has polled as high as 21%, but that was still 49% behind Biden. As such, Biden's a 2/9 clear favourite to be the Democrat nominee in 2024, but if he drops out for whatever reason then the race is wide open.

Only 531 days until the election...

Lowlandbrit wrote:...we could see the Republicans become the broad national working class party...

One would hope that this is only until that demographic realises they're still being screwed by Trump and his sycophants at their expense. Then again, I would have thought they'd have realised that already. A true triumph of hope over experience...

navyblueshorts wrote:

Lowlandbrit wrote:...we could see the Republicans become the broad national working class party...

One would hope that this is only until that demographic realises they're still being screwed by Trump and his sycophants at their expense. Then again, I would have thought they'd have realised that already. A true triumph of hope over experience...

I also read of Democrat voters either not voting, or voting for Trump, in protest of the Democrats' support for Israel in the current crisis. As if Trump would somehow be more pro-Palestine than Biden. Did they forget his 4 years as President?

I think in the end trump lost 2m voters from 2020. The story of the election being the Dems losing 15m, so not sure it says very much about the republicans broad appeal or trumps message cutting through, as much as the Dems running on continuity that many weren't happy with honestly.

As objective as any of us might try to be, there are always signs that we don't see simply because we don't want to see them. High inflation, a very unpopular incumbent, and his literal deputy trying to run as a change candidate - you're doing very well if you manage to win in those circumstances.

Credit where it's due to Trump and the team he assembled. He appealed to enough people where it mattered, and that's all there is to it.

Having said that, the worst thing for me is that he's completely unrepentant for anything he's ever done, yet he's back in the White House. I know we don't live in an ideal world, but there's like a fundamental injustice to that. All the meanness, the nastiness, the spitefulness, toward his fellow man has been rewarded. What a great example that is!

JuliusHMarx wrote:

navyblueshorts wrote:

Lowlandbrit wrote:...we could see the Republicans become the broad national working class party...

One would hope that this is only until that demographic realises they're still being screwed by Trump and his sycophants at their expense. Then again, I would have thought they'd have realised that already. A true triumph of hope over experience...

I also read of Democrat voters either not voting, or voting for Trump, in protest of the Democrats' support for Israel in the current crisis. As if Trump would somehow be more pro-Palestine than Biden. Did they forget his 4 years as President?

Yeah. The Palestinians are ****ed because historical guilt over The Holocaust is giving the green light for the current Israeli regime to do anything whatsoever that they fancy. It doesn't matter who's in the White House re. that regional abattoir.

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:As objective as any of us might try to be, there are always signs that we don't see simply because we don't want to see them. High inflation, a very unpopular incumbent, and his literal deputy trying to run as a change candidate - you're doing very well if you manage to win in those circumstances.

Credit where it's due to Trump and the team he assembled. He appealed to enough people where it mattered, and that's all there is to it.

Having said that, the worst thing for me is that he's completely unrepentant for anything he's ever done, yet he's back in the White House. I know we don't live in an ideal world, but there's like a fundamental injustice to that. All the meanness, the nastiness, the spitefulness, toward his fellow man has been rewarded. What a great example that is!

Yep. So much for the 'civilised world', eh?

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:As objective as any of us might try to be, there are always signs that we don't see simply because we don't want to see them. High inflation, a very unpopular incumbent, and his literal deputy trying to run as a change candidate - you're doing very well if you manage to win in those circumstances.

Credit where it's due to Trump and the team he assembled. He appealed to enough people where it mattered, and that's all there is to it.

Having said that, the worst thing for me is that he's completely unrepentant for anything he's ever done, yet he's back in the White House. I know we don't live in an ideal world, but there's like a fundamental injustice to that. All the meanness, the nastiness, the spitefulness, toward his fellow man has been rewarded. What a great example that is!

This.
I know history is littered with bad people achieving popularity and success, but it's still distressing to see it happening. I'm convinced that most people will overlook evil if they are offered the promise of more money.

JuliusHMarx wrote:It also happened when Trump lost in 2020 but for some reason you didn't think it would happen if he lost again.

I did think it would happen again. That's why I said about Trump not being in power would hopefully mitigate the worst effects.

GSC wrote:I think in the end trump lost 2m voters from 2020. The story of the election being the Dems losing 15m, so not sure it says very much about the republicans broad appeal or trumps message cutting through, as much as the Dems running on continuity that many weren't happy with honestly.

That is indeed the story. That's why I said before the election that Trump didn't need to win new voters, if Democrat turnout was depressed. I'm not sure anyone expected it to be this low, but polls continually indicated that Republican voters had more enthusiasm - the polls were painting a much better picture for Democrats when it was sampling 'registered voters', but change to 'likely voters' and it was better for the Republicans.

Blame for that has to lie with Harris. She thought being anti-Trump and hammering an anti-Trump message would be enough, as in 2020. Difference was, Trump isn't currently in office and perceptions of him have improved over the past four years and people didn't see him as great a threat/negative. Harris needed to defend her record more and offer more campaign promises to electrify Democrat turnout, especially amongst younger and first time voters. As a candidate, she was terrible in interviews, but pretty good at campaign rallies. Chance missed.

I think they need to stop relying on celebrities so much as well. Think it's generally been shown that people don't give a toss about who some singer or actor is endorsing, yet the headlines of Taylor Swift's endorsement dominated the news, and some even claimed that it would seal the election for Harris. Laughable. Another celebrity who endorsed Harris - Cardi B? - was extremely unhelpful, when she complained about inflation and the state of the economy at a Harris rally. Might have worked if it were 2020.

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:As objective as any of us might try to be, there are always signs that we don't see simply because we don't want to see them. High inflation, a very unpopular incumbent, and his literal deputy trying to run as a change candidate - you're doing very well if you manage to win in those circumstances.

Credit where it's due to Trump and the team he assembled. He appealed to enough people where it mattered, and that's all there is to it.

Having said that, the worst thing for me is that he's completely unrepentant for anything he's ever done, yet he's back in the White House. I know we don't live in an ideal world, but there's like a fundamental injustice to that. All the meanness, the nastiness, the spitefulness, toward his fellow man has been rewarded. What a great example that is!

It was a very tough election to predict. Whoever won, there would be factors we could look at in hindsight and say 'oh yeah, it was obvious x would win'. As you say, with Trump's win, we can look at the factors of inflation and Biden's unpopularity and four weak years of the Democrats. If Harris had won, we'd probably be looking back at Trump's age, January 6th, 2020 in general, roe v wade/the turnout of women voters, the debate, Walz's popularity v Vance, and maybe a million other things!

Maine's been called. Still waiting on Nevada and Arizona.

Those two states really need to sort themselves out. Florida counted 10 million or so votes in a few hours. Arizona/Nevada might take a full week to finalise a result, with much fewer voters. It's a joke. Thankfully, we're not in a scenario where the election result hinges on it, but we easily could have been.

Trump's lead in Arizona has grown since I last checked. He leads by about 5% with around 70% counted. Victory is pretty much assured there. And a Trump win in Nevada, first since 2004, like the popular vote, is a 99% probability at this point.

Duty281 wrote:

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:As objective as any of us might try to be, there are always signs that we don't see simply because we don't want to see them. High inflation, a very unpopular incumbent, and his literal deputy trying to run as a change candidate - you're doing very well if you manage to win in those circumstances.

Credit where it's due to Trump and the team he assembled. He appealed to enough people where it mattered, and that's all there is to it.

Having said that, the worst thing for me is that he's completely unrepentant for anything he's ever done, yet he's back in the White House. I know we don't live in an ideal world, but there's like a fundamental injustice to that. All the meanness, the nastiness, the spitefulness, toward his fellow man has been rewarded. What a great example that is!

It was a very tough election to predict. Whoever won, there would be factors we could look at in hindsight and say 'oh yeah, it was obvious x would win'. As you say, with Trump's win, we can look at the factors of inflation and Biden's unpopularity and four weak years of the Democrats. If Harris had won, we'd probably be looking back at Trump's age, January 6th, 2020 in general, roe v wade/the turnout of women voters, the debate, Walz's popularity v Vance, and maybe a million other things!

Exactly the views of a friend who worked in the civil service in the justice department, then moved in journalism, so knows far more about this than. We were chatting about the election a few days before. He said it was fascinating, not only because the election was so tight, but in both scenarios you could pretty much draw up the exact reasons Harris or Trump might have won/lost. It's just, no one could quite call who would.

I think it was Nate Silver who ran 80,000 simulations and Harris came out on top in 41,000 of them. So he gave her the narrowest lead in his EC prediction. Even then though, when Trump won in those simulations, it tended to be by bigger margins, sweeping more swing states by a few percent. As happened.

Even the experts were on a knife edge with who might win but could predict the manner of the wins and reasons it might happen.