The game is afoot!
Prognosticators are prognosticating about who will win the next US presidential election.
Let's take a stab at this, with key points in bold and italics. Caveat - This discussion ignores the possibility that Trump may be in prison during the next election, and just looks at polls!
An average of recent public opinion polls gives Trump a 2.3% lead over Biden at the moment, and many people on both sides of the aisle are saying that Biden should step aside as he is too old.
The day he becomes the nominee, the Democrats will get in line behind him, and all discussion of his age will end. This is mostly a diversion.
Unless Biden dies, his age is irrelevant.
An average of recent public opinion polls also gives the undecided and independents as about 9% of the population. The independents and undecided do not like Trump and all the "stuff" that surrounds him. They have swung the vote decisively in favour of the Democrats in recent elections, and one would expect this to continue in 2024.
As well, American elections since Roe v Wade was reversed have witnessed the aggressive mobilization of pro-abortion voters, which has dramatically favored Democratic candidates. This, coupled with the dislike of Trump by independents and the undecided, contributed to a series of unexpected election triumphs by the Democrats.
Absent other candidates who take votes from Biden, the swing votes of undecideds and independents to his cause and against Trump, plus the mobilization of the pro-abortion vote, should give him the presidency in 2024.
But the plot thickens.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West have announced that they will contest the presidency in 2024. They are virtually guaranteed to be on the ballot in most if not all states. These gentlemen change the calculus quite considerably.
Some polls have Kennedy getting as high as 21% of the popular vote, and West getting as high as 4%. Given the divisiveness in the US polity right now, I think they may do far worse as voters coalesce around their champions, and avoid voting for candidates who simply can't win. (Note - there is a "wild card" discussion below that explores an alternative to this.)
Nonetheless, while adding Kennedy alone does not change things too much between Biden and Trump - maybe a slight advantage for Trump - with West in the race, Biden loses significantly more votes than Trump does. In this situation, Biden loses about 6% of the popular vote to Trump's 3 - 4%. West's assumed attractiveness to Black voters and to other voters of Left-wing persuasion will mean that Biden's advantages courtesy of the independents and undecided not liking Trump and courtesy of the pro-abortion vote will be overwhelmed.
With Kennedy and West in the race, and particularly West, Trump will eek out a slim victory in the 2024 presidential election.
Note that Jill Stein has also just announced that she will run for the Green Party in the 2024 presidential election. There isn't much polling about how this may affect the race, but one would have to think that she can only pull votes from Biden as Trump is basically the antithesis of "Green".
With both West and Stein running in the 2024 presidential election, Trump should be the odds-on favourite to win - they are "Biden killers".
What about Manchin?
The "No Label's" people have been exploring the possibility of running a serious independent candidate, and Joe Manchin has announced that he will not run for re-election as a senator in 2024, making him the presumptive candidate. There isn't much polling looking at the effects of a Manchin candidacy, but the polling that does exist suggests next to no effect on the outcome between Biden and Trump. - Manchin would get between 5% and 10% of the vote, taking about equally from both of the other candidates.
Note that Manchin would be running for No Labels based, in part, on the idea that Biden and Trump are too old, and that a younger third party candidate has a chance of succeeding at becoming president based on age alone. Um, like...Joe Manchin is 76 years old! No Labels looks to me like a complete waste of time, unless they put forward someone entirely different.
What about Cheney?
Liz Cheney is the quintessential old school Republican, who essentially led the January 6th congressional committee that reached so many damning conclusions about Trump and his entourage. She does not want Trump to become president again. If she tossed her hat into the ring, one would think that she would attract most, if not all, of the anti-Trump Republican vote, and ruin his chances of a repeat performance in the White House.
In fact, all polling reviewed for this blurb suggests that her candidacy - absent candidates other than Biden and Trump - almost guarantees a victory by Trump, with him getting 3% to 8% more of the popular vote than Biden. One has to wonder if this would be because the independent and undecided voters would move to her and not Biden, thereby starving him of that crucial support?
Cheney will not be announcing a run at the White House in 2024, and if Manchin does, it will be essentially irrelevant for the outcome of the election.
In conclusion...
Donald Trump will likely be the next President of the United States.
HOWEVER! There is a wildcard here.
Kennedy is nuts, but he is also interesting as he is running at a time when much of America is arguably also nuts. In sum, he is a Right-leaning conspiracy theorist with the surname of America's most famous Democratic politician and an icon of the Left.
If Kennedy can: 1. position himself as the champion of conspiracies, especially as related to COVID-19, and thereby grab some of the vote on the Right from Trump; and 2. also position himself as an icon of the Left - especially on issues like the environment and abortion - and grab some of the vote from Biden and others; and if he can 3. seem like a real younger alternative to Trump and Biden and take much of the independent and undecided vote, well then, he may have a real chance at this!
His name alone seems to get him 10% of the vote. A six-way race - Trump, Biden, Kennedy, Stein, Manchin and West - could go as follows (pure speculation based very roughly on existing polling): Manchin - 8%; Stein - 1%; and West - 4%. They would effectively eat away at much of Biden's support, meaning Biden could end up as low as 28% - 30%. This leaves about 60% of the vote, of which maybe 7% could still be undecided and independent given the alternatives to Biden.
What could happen with Kennedy in such a race vis a vis Trump?
Trump's "Always Trump" or core support is between 25% and 30% of the Republican Party, and he is polling at about 65% nationally of Republican Party supporters versus other GOP presidential candidates. With Republicans making up about 45% of voters, this suggest that Trump's rock solid base is about 12% of the electorate, and very strong support for him would come from about 30% of voters.
If Kennedy could take essentially all of the undecided and independents left over above (7%) plus gain support from name recognition (10%), and convince some of the electorate who are very strong Trump supporters to support him, perhaps emphasizing Trump's role in developing COVID-19 vaccines (say 4%), as well as taking even more support from Biden than will be taken by Manchin, West and Stein (say 4%), perhaps pushing Biden as low as 25% to 27%, then it is conceivable that Biden, Trump and Kennedy would all be at about 25% - 30% of the popular vote. Yes, this is a stretch, but some polls already have Kennedy as high as 21% (...and, OK, as low as 7%)!
This situation would be resolved state by state in the Electoral College where the overall national percentage of the electorate voting for one candidate or another is not the key consideration, and where the candidate with a slightly lower percentage of national support could still win, the point being that...
...If Kennedy can position himself carefully between the conspiracy theorists on the one hand and icon-loving Democrats on the other, while emphasizing that he is younger than Biden or Trump and thereby getting most of the undecided and independent vote, along with getting name recognition votes, then he could become a real threat, and this election would be a complete crap shoot.
It is actually conceivable that Kennedy could win.
And if Kennedy were to win, the two places on earth that he should avoid visiting are Dallas and Los Angeles. .
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