Donald Trump Has Real Reason to Worry About November

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think President Joe Biden’s reelection bid is deeply troubled and that Democrats would have been much better served by a younger, more vigorous candidate. But just as they did in 2022, Republicans may be getting too confident, certain that Biden is a hapless, demented goner whom voters are eager to put down like one of Kristi Noem’s dogs. But a closer look at the data suggests that members of the GOP should also be worried. They have saddled themselves with possibly the worst major-party nominee in American history, who has already led the Republican Party to four consecutive underperformances in national elections and who has made precisely zero adjustments to his divisive rhetoric, unpopular policy positions, and authoritarian promises in the interim. The numbers show that they very much do not have this in the bag yet.

The chief problem that should make Republican strategists reach for their Xanax is that Trump cannot seem to push his thinning cartoon hair through his long-standing polling ceiling of around 47 percent. Partway through his third consecutive presidential election, with virtually universal name recognition, the star power of a tabloid TV personality, and now the celebrity cachet of a former president, Trump has yet to crack 48 percent in the RealClearPolitics head-to-head polling average against any of his opponents. A more visceral representation of this ceiling is Trump’s actual showing in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, in which he received 46.1 percent and 46.8 percent of the vote, respectively. Trump has dominated the American political scene for nine years now, and it is highly unlikely that he is going to meaningfully improve on that number in November.

There is also some history that suggests that Trump’s mountain might be too steep to climb anyway. The two major parties have rarely renominated as that party’s standard-bearer someone who has already lost a general election, but when they have, that candidate has almost never done better the next time around, at least in terms of raw vote totals. Republican Richard Nixon in 1968, Democrat Adlai Stevenson in 1956, Republican Thomas Dewey in 1948, and Democrat William Jennings Bryan in both 1900 and 1908 all received a smaller share of the popular vote when they were nominated again after suffering defeat in a previous general election. Bryan is also the only other person in American history to receive his party’s nomination a third time after twice losing the popular vote—merely one reason why it was bananas for GOP primary voters to pick Trump again. True, Nixon won the Electoral College, but—like Grover Cleveland before him in 1892—he triumphed largely because third-party candidates (most notably segregationist George Wallace) drew enough votes away from his opponent to prevail.

So, if history is any guide, Trump is extremely fortunate that 2024 looks likely to be a better-than-average year for third-party candidates. And that means that the winner is likely to be determined by undecided voters or those who currently say that they will vote for third-party candidates, mostly independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. What do we know about these pools of voters?

In the most recent Fox News poll, Kennedy was drawing 12 percent of voters under 30 and 16 percent of self-identified moderates—his best showing of any subgroup of voters in the survey. He was also winning 14 percent of nonwhite women. And in the most recent poll from the Economist/YouGov, 18-to-29-year-old voters were among the most likely to be undecided (10 percent of the cohort) or Kennedy supporters (7 percent). Ten percent of self-identified moderates were undecided, and 6 percent expressed an intention to vote for Kennedy. Ten percent of women vs. 6 percent of men expressed no preference. In the Quinnipiac poll released on Wednesday, Kennedy pulls a staggering 19 percent of registered 18-to-34-year-olds, with another 8 percent of that cohort saying they will vote for independent candidate Cornel West.

These are all groups that, needless to say, do not generally skew MAGA. That is clearly hurting Biden in polls at present—but those totals are very likely to fall as the election nears. Third-party candidates at all levels of government tend to see their support decline as the election approaches. Potential third-party voters are subject to enormous social pressure from peers who warn them that their decision could help elect their least preferred candidate, and many respond by voting reluctantly for the Democrat or Republican. Most people ultimately do not want to feel at all responsible for what they would perceive as a catastrophic outcome.

So, although Kennedy should do better in the end than most third-party candidates, it’s safe to predict that his final totals will be below where his polls are now. And given the higher share of Biden-skewing groups in his coalition, the inevitable collapse in support for Kennedy should benefit Biden more than Trump. No matter how you slice it, Biden has more room to grow with undecided and third-party voters than Trump does.

In 2016 Libertarian Gary Johnson, a goofily likable former Republican governor of New Mexico, saw his support collapse from an early September high of 9.1 percent to 4.7 percent in the final RealClearPolitics average. He ultimately pulled just 3.3 percent of the vote. In 2000 Green Party candidate Ralph Nader hit a high of 6 percent in June 2000 Gallup polling before registering just 2.7 percent on Election Day. And it’s not just in presidential elections. In 2022, for example, independent Oregon gubernatorial candidate Betsy Johnson was polling at about 20 percent in August before getting just 8.6 percent. That Kennedy’s support will drop in half by Election Day is a pretty safe bet. And although Green Party nominee Jill Stein and independent Cornel West are drawing comparatively limited support, they are strongest among Democratic-leaning groups like Black voters and young people, according to the Quinnipiac poll.

When voters desert Kennedy, which they almost certainly will, those who still turn up to cast a ballot will face a choice they find unpleasant at best. But as unpopular as Joe Biden is, and as much as voters say they have major concerns about his age and his policies, it is still hard to argue that he is a worse candidate than Donald Trump on the fundamentals. The 45^th president was just convicted of 34 felony counts in a Manhattan court and faces three other active prosecutions in Florida, Georgia, and Washington. The Georgia case has been suspended indefinitely by state appellate court, and although the other two might not go to trial before the election thanks to the ingenious foot-dragging of the Supreme Court, the trials still constitute serious baggage that any candidate, let alone one as undisciplined, unloved, and unyielding as Donald Trump, would have trouble stuffing away in the overhead bin.

There are a few other variables that seem to be breaking Biden’s way. One is that Democrats keep clobbering Republicans in special elections. Over the course of the 2023–24 cycle, Democrats have significantly overperformed their 2020 baseline in state and federal special elections. Though special elections have generally been more predictive of the national vote for the House than the presidency, the fact that so many congressional Democrats are running ahead of Biden in polling is much more of an opportunity for Biden than for Trump. The president, at least, has an opportunity to close that gap in the coming months.

How could he do that? Well, the economic good news keeps coming. Inflation is trending down, job growth is strong, unemployment is close to a 40-year low, the economy is growing, the stock market is near the all-time high it reached earlier this year, and consumer confidence—while it could be better—is about what it was in 2016, and much higher than when Trump left office. These numbers have led FiveThirtyEight’s model to give Biden an advantage on the “economic fundamentals” of the race.

Slate wants to help. Submit your questions here. It’s anonymous! No question is too dumb—or too existential.

One last note of optimism for Democrats comes from the cursed Electoral College. In 2020 its pro-Republican bias was the highest it had been since 1948. Biden won the so-called tipping-point state of Wisconsin by 0.6 percent despite winning the national popular vote by 4.5 percent. That means that Biden needed to win the national popular vote by at least 3.8 percent to win the presidency. Polling data so far this year suggests that this Republican edge may have dropped dramatically. FiveThirtyEight’s data pegs it at 1.4 percent. If Trump’s polling gains among young and nonwhite voters actually materialize on Election Day, they could narrow the gap in places like California, New York, and New Jersey—solid-blue enclaves—without actually flipping any states. In fact, it is even conceivable that Biden could lose the popular vote and still win the presidency. According to RealClearPolitics elections analyst Sean Trende, it “wouldn’t take much of a shift in voting patterns … for it to become extremely likely.”

Does this mean that Democrats should feel great about this election? It does not. The outcome is a jump ball at best, and Biden—who continues to trail Trump narrowly in polling averages—could be hit with an almost infinite number of bad-news scenarios between now and the election. The president has the same set of worrisome liabilities that he did a few months ago at the height of Beltway chatter about replacing him, and even at this late date, I still think the party would be better off if he stepped aside. But Trump and his allies shouldn’t start booking their inauguration hotel rooms quite yet. For one thing, Trump might be in prison. But even if he isn’t, he might once again be the losing candidate down the street, holding an innocent little patriotic rally while Biden’s Electoral College victory is certified.