It’s likely we will all remember the fifth of November this year, which will see current president Joe Biden face off against former president Donald Trump (and a few other candidates, on whom more soon) in the US presidential election. But you could be forgiven for not having tuned into the contest yet, especially if you belong to the half of humanity who lives in another country its own national election, in what has been dubbed the biggest election year in history.
Indeed, you would be forgiven for fantasising about a time when US elections don’t much matter to everyone else. Alas, this is not that time. Once again, the preferences of a sliver of swing voters in a few swing counties in a few swing states will have a monstrously disproportionate influence on the rest of humanity. If you’ll recall, it was 537 votes in Florida that prevented moderate Democrat Al Gore losing to right-wing1 Republican George W Bush in 2000. The effect that those 537 voters have unwittingly had on the course of the twenty-first century so far scarcely bears thinking about. Among the many stains on the younger Bush’s legacy, a counterfactual President Al Gore would presumably not have invaded Iraq; would at least have drawn attention to, rather than denied, the inconvenient truth of manmade climate change; and perhaps would have had a more spritely response to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.
You would be forgiven for fantasising about a time when US elections don’t much matter to everyone else. Alas, this is not that time.
Though we lack the benefit of hindsight this year, it’s not difficult to see how a Trump victory in November would deliver a catastrophic blow to an already fragile and fraying “world order” that still affords a semblance of stability and coordination. There are many valid critiques of that world order, who it benefits, and the means by which it is upheld—and these critiques have gained greater moral momentum since the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. But one has to engage in Olympic-level acrobatics to imagine that a White House staffed with Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Jared Kushner would make anything better, in the Middle East or elsewhere. Trump, who as president tore up a nuclear deal with Iran, provocatively moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and rolled back American opposition to the construction of settlements in the West Bank, has urged Israel to “finish the problem” in Gaza.
In the months to come I’ll be looking at the many other issues, both foreign and domestic, at play in the election; suffice it to say for now that the outcome matters for people and places within and far beyond America’s shores. But how will it be decided? For the new (or lapsed) observer, here’s a quick primer on the rules of the game, before we look at the players.
The rules: 270 to win
The US election is won by the candidate with a majority of votes in the electoral college. The Electoral College is made up of “electors” from the 50 states, plus Washington DC, and votes are awarded somewhat proportionately. California is the largest state and correspondingly has the most electoral votes (54), while a cluster of the smallest states have only three votes apiece. But this is not strictly proportional, as every state gets a “bonus” two electors. As a result, there are over 700,000 voters per electoral vote in California but less than 200,000 in Wyoming.
Most electors are awarded on a winner-takes-all basis, which is why only a few swing states tend to determine the outcome of most races. So a vote in New York or Mississippi counts for much less than one cast in Pennsylvania or Nevada. It takes an outright majority of the 538 Electoral College votes, or 270, to win the presidency. If that doesn’t happen, things get complicated (see below).
The players: familiar faces
Joe Biden and Donald Trump easily won their respective party primaries, which means that 2024 will see the first presidential rematch since 1956. It will also feature the oldest two candidates in presidential history (Biden is 81, Trump is 77), and among the most disliked in recent memory. A significant proportion of voters disapprove of both Biden and Trump, and the these so-called “double haters” hold a particular influence on the fate of the election.
Biden and Trump will not be the only names on the ballot. The Green Party’s Jill Stein, conspiracist Robert F Kennedy Jr., and academic Cornell West all hope to meet stringent requirements to join the ballot in multiple states. Although it’s highly unlikely any would win a state outright, each third-party candidate could draw votes away from the two main parties, and it’s likely that on net this would hurt Biden more.
The polls: freak out and carry on
Democrats have had regular, public freak-outs following the release of several opinion polls over recent months, among them a New York Times poll in early March that saw Biden five points down. The roots of dissatisfaction with Biden’s performance lie in persistent inflation, the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, concerns over illegal migration, and above all, his age. An overwhelming majority of the public feels, fairly or otherwise, that he is too old to serve as president for four more years, and his approval rating remains historically low, more closely resembling that of past presidents who lost reelection than those who won it.
But the ship has steadied of late. Biden’s feisty and widely regarded State of the Union speech later in March did something to quell and quiet Democratic fears, and he made clear gains in the latest NYT poll. Unemployment remains historically low, violent crime has fallen, and despite global tensions, the stock market has hit record highs. And Democrats insist that, following a string of successes in the 2022 midterms and 2023 special elections, polling is underestimating Biden, not Trump. Then there’s the small matter of the quadruply-indicted former president. Due to various delays, there’s slim-to-nil chance that the former president will see the inside of a jail cell before the November election. But the sight of a first president in American history facing criminal charges is sure to have unpredictable impacts on the direction of the race.
The bottom line is that national polls are now more or less dead even. But Biden will need to make further ground between now and November, because the majority of swing state polls still clearly favour Trump—and as we’ve seen, it’s these states that will decide the election.
A plausible map sees Biden retaining the “blue wall” of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, but losing the “sun belt” states of Nevada, Arizona and Georgia that he took in 2020 (in pink). This would give him the slenderest of margins over Trump in the Electoral College.
But Republicans, well-known by now for their opportunism, have a plan to make this path more complicated for Biden. Nebraska and Maine are the only two states to award their Electoral College votes not on a winner-takes-all basis, but instead by giving a candidate a vote for each congressional district that they win. Nebraska is a safe Republican state with a Democratic district, and Maine is the reverse, a safe Democratic seat with a Republican district. Republicans in Nebraska are attempting to revert the state to the winner-takes-all approach, which would cost Biden a crucial vote. There’s a possibility that if they do, Maine could do the same to balance things out—but not, and therefore if neither candidate gets 270 votes, things get constitutionally complicated, but it’s very likely that Trump would prevail due to Republicans controlling more state delegations in Congress.
It’s a coin flip
As of now, nobody knows who will be the next president, and anyone who asserts otherwise is lying to you, themselves, or both. Every presidential election is unusual in its own way, but this one is unusually unusual: a rare rematch featuring a historically unpopular incumbent, a just-as-unpopular and quadruply-indicted challenger, and several third-party long-shots who could feasibly affect the outcome. The national polls are dead even, and the crucial swing state polls still favour Trump, though these—particularly in the “blue wall”—may revert to Biden in the coming weeks, taking us towards 270-268 (or 269-269) territory. And there’s still an enormous amount that can and will happen between now and November.
When it arrives, the fifth of November will be a long night. Expect fireworks.±
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Bush was considered right-wing by the standards of the Republican Party at the time, having seen off the maverick John McCain, but has enjoyed a rehabilitation since the emergence of Trump. Historians rank his presidency as middling to low.