2024 Presidential Race: Not Only Can Trump Win, Right Now He's The Favorite To Win

There’s a strange disjunction in the discourse about the 2024 elections. On the one hand, when presented with the proposition “Trump can win,” people will nod their heads sagely and say something along the lines of: “Of course he can; only a fool would believe to the contrary.”

At the same time, whenever polling emerges showing that Donald Trump is performing well in 2024 matchups, a deluge of panicked articles, tweets (or is it “X”s?), social media posts, and the like emerge, reassuring readers that polls aren’t predictive and providing a variety of reasons that things will improve for President Biden.

As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Elections analysts seem to know that they are obliged to mouth the words that Trump can win, but deep down, they don’t believe them. The notion that Biden is the favorite is deeply internalized, likely for a variety of reasons.

As of this writing, Trump leads Biden by 2.6 percentage points nationally in the RealClearPolitics Average. This is Trump’s largest lead in the RCP average to date. Not for 2024, mind you. Ever.

Let’s put this in perspective. In 2016, Trump led Hillary Clinton for all of five days in the national RCP Average, each of those days in the immediate aftermath of the Republican convention. He led in 29 polls taken over the course of the entire campaign, 10 of which are recorded in the RCP averages as Los Angeles Times/USC tracking polls.

In 2020, Trump never led Biden in the national RCP Average. He briefly closed to within four points in early January of 2020, but that is it. He led in five polls all cycle.

So, counting the L.A. Times tracker as a single poll, Trump led in a total of 24 national polls. This cycle? He’s led in that many since mid-September. He’s led in more polls in the past three weeks than he did against Biden in all of 2019-2020.

You may be thinking that we don’t elect our president via the popular vote, but rather do so through the Electoral College. This is, of course, true. It also makes Trump’s current position in the polls all the more striking. After all, Trump has consistently outperformed his polling, and his Electoral College positioning has consistently been stronger than his national positioning. That doesn’t mean that this will necessarily hold in 2024, and at some point, the GOP’s worsening position in the suburbs will reverse the Electoral College dynamic that has plagued Democrats for the past few cycles.

To put this in even deeper perspective, Mitt Romney never led President Barack Obama in the RCP Average in Wisconsin (and led in just three polls), Pennsylvania (likewise, he led in just three polls), Michigan (he led in just eight polls), or Ohio (Romney led 10 polls all cycle). Things were a bit sunnier for Romney in Florida, where he had leads in the low single digits frequently. The same is true for North Carolina, although Obama led there until May.

He narrowly trails Biden in Wisconsin but has already led in almost as many polls as he led in the state in 2016 and 2020 combined. His 0.7% deficit compares to his previous best showing in the state: A 3.5% deficit in August of 2020.

In other words, analyzing this election correctly isn’t just a matter of giving lip service to the notion that Trump can win this election. The correct position right now is that Trump is better positioned in the polls to win this election than any GOP nominee since at least 2004. Not only that, he habitually over-performs his polls. Frankly, if you are willing to set favorites this far out, you should almost certainly declare Donald Trump the favorite.

Does any of this mean that Trump will win the presidency in 2024? Absolutely not. There are good arguments why perceptions of the economy will improve between now and then (although maybe they won’t). Perhaps Trump will under-perform his polling this time, as the GOP did in 2022 (although, maybe he won’t). There are good arguments that Trump’s criminal trials will erode his standing in the polls (although having watched Trump scandals unfold for the better part of four decades now, maybe they won’t).

These all make for fun speculation and are useful reminders that if a week is a lifetime in politics, then a year is, well, a very, very long time. Analysts should, of course, feel free to indulge in gaming out the possibilities.

But when the conversation returns to what we do know, there honestly is only one correct answer: Trump can win this election, and is well-positioned to do so.

Sean Trende is senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. He is a co-author of the 2014 Almanac of American Politics and author of The Lost Majority.

Thank you for referencing that article SeekAndFind.

"2024 Presidential Race: Not Only Can Trump Win, Right Now He's The Favorite To Win"

First, the bottom line...

Consider that probably the main reason that we hear media and political party complaints about the electoral college is this. The electoral college is the only thing stopping the corrupt, constitutionally undefined political parties that have pirated control of state and federal governments from establishing a permanent puppet presidency that will unquestioningly sign unconstitutional taxing and spending bills into law.

That being said, the next major political event in the U.S. is not hopeful Trump 47 being elected for the third time. The next major event is Democratic and Republican Trump supporters primarying ALL state and federal incumbent lawmakers and executives, except for MTG, Gaetz & Company, Jordan (and others?).

Voters need to replace incumbents with patriots who will be happy to support Trump to not only finish draining the swamp, but will also support him in surrendering state powers that the very corrupt, unconstitutionally big federal government has stolen from the states back to the states.

"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
“If the tax be not proposed for the common defence, or general welfare, but for other objects, wholly extraneous, (as for instance, for propagating Mahometanism among the Turks, or giving aids and subsidies to a foreign nation, to build palaces for its kings, or erect monuments to its heroes,) it would be wholly indefensible upon constitutional principles [emphases added].” — Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2 (1833).
From the congressional record:
”Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government [emphases added]. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.” —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
“Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves [emphasis added]. It seems to be the law of our general nature.” - Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Edward Carrington January 16, 1787)
Pelosi: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." (non-FR; 6 sec.)
Democrats Are Terrified Of An Educated And Informed Public (3.12.23)

In fact, if DC respected its constitutionally limited power to deliver the mail, the mail being one of the very few powers that the states have actually given the feds to dictate domestic policy, the worst problem that the country would otherwise be looking at with a new Congress of Trump-supporting freshman lawmakers is arguably that citizens that would ultimately get into the habit of lightheartedly questioning if the federal government has shutdown if they receive their mail a few days late.

"Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.

Trump can endorse candidates from lists that patriots who respect the federal government's constitutionally limited powers provide for him, as long as candidates are not incumbents, candidates also promising to repeal the 16th (direct taxes) and 17th (popular voting for federal senators) Amendments after they win office.

Consider the repealing of 16&17A as part of reparations for victim taxpayers of the unconstitutionally big federal government for having to pay a lifetime of unconstitutional federal taxes, taxes that Congress cannot reasonably justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers and a few other constitutionally enumerated expenses.

Again, the electoral college is the only thing stopping the corrupt political parties from establishing a permanent puppet presidency that will unquestioningly sign unconstitutional taxing and spending bills into law.

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