Biden vs. Trump Rematch Is Official: Inside the 2024 Election Numbers and Narrative
Four years ago this week, the U.S. was descending into madness, starting with COVID lockdowns and round-the-clock fear-mongering. In those days, no one besides his relatives, acquaintances, victims and some law enforcement officials had yet heard of George Floyd.
On Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, former President Donald Trump won the Republican presidential primary contests in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington, as well as the party’s Hawaii caucus, thereby clinching enough delegates to secure the GOP nomination and set up a general election rematch with President Joe Biden, who also clinched enough delegates on Tuesday to earn the Democratic nomination.
Americans will now officially witness the same political contest that helped fuel the madness of 2020.
Since then, of course, the ruling class and its minions in the establishment media have resorted to brazen tyranny. To stop Trump from returning to the White House, they have shown themselves capable of anything.
In other words, venture 2024 election predictions at your peril. At this point, nothing should surprise us.
With that caveat in mind, we may evaluate the state of the presidential race as it appears the day after the two candidates’ nomination-clinching victories.
The Numbers
Months of head-to-head polling data have shown Trump holding a narrow lead over Biden nationwide.
The latest Real Clear Polling average has Trump with a 2.1-point lead. For comparison’s sake, on this date in 2020 Biden held a 6-point lead in the same average of polls. And Hillary Clinton held an identical 6-point lead over Trump on this date in 2016.
In other words, Trump is currently polling 8 points better head-to-head than he did in his two previous presidential runs. Considering the establishment’s relentless war on the former president, his mounting popularity could hardly carry more significance.
Furthermore, based on head-to-head polling in presumptive battleground states, Trump has an even greater edge in the Electoral College.
Mid-February polls conducted by Bloomberg/Morning Consult showed Trump leading by 2 points in Michigan, 4 in Wisconsin, and 6 in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Polls conducted this month in Georgia and North Carolina had Trump up by 3 to 5 points.
When pollsters have added independent and third-party candidates to the list of choices, voters have responded with even more bad news for Biden.
In a five-way race including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Trump’s average lead nationally grows to 2.7 points, according to Real Clear Polling.
Furthermore, the February Bloomberg/Morning Consult polls revealed that with Kennedy, West and Stein added to the equation, Trump saw a 1- to 3-point boost in every battleground state except Michigan, where he nonetheless maintained his lead.
Of course, many things could happen between now and November. West and Stein, for instance, could drop out and leave their voters up for grabs. In that case, things get even more interesting.
According to Real Clear Polling, a three-way race between Trump, Biden and Kennedy would give Trump an average lead nationally of more than 4 points.
Kennedy earned support from a very respectable 15 percent of respondents in those polls. And the general election race has only barely begun.
In sum, when viewed from every possible angle, the current state of the race in quantitative terms favors Trump.
The Narrative
On the political narrative front, Trump faces a double-barreled challenge from both Biden and the president’s establishment media lackeys. As it stands in mid-March, the broader anti-Trump narrative looks as if it will assume two different strands.
First, the establishment media has already begun to depict the 2024 election as a matchup no one wanted.
For instance, the AP anticipated a “grueling” campaign and quoted a Georgia Republican voter who said Trump was not her first choice. “It’s sad that it’s the same old matchup as four years ago,” the voter said.
The outlet also highlighted the two leading candidates’ ages.
Trump, 77, has shown no signs of diminished mental or physical energy. The 81-year-old Biden, on the other hand, has often struggled to speak coherently or even remain upright.
Democrats, of course, opted against holding competitive primaries. For that reason, RFK Jr. left the party in October to run as an independent. (That still has not prevented Biden from struggling to fend off “uncommitted” voters in certain states.)
Republicans, on the other hand, conducted a vigorous primary election. Trump dominated those contests, winning by enormous margins and earning a near-sweep over well-heeled establishment darling Nikki Haley.
In other words, GOP voters consistently showed enthusiasm for Trump, as they regularly do at his rallies.
Why, then, would the AP quote a disappointed Republican, as if that voter represented the party as a whole? And why would it mention the candidates’ ages but fail to note the obvious differences in their capabilities?
The answer, of course, is that the first strand of the establishment’s anti-Trump narrative involves downplaying Biden’s age by mentioning it only in the context of an allegedly undesirable matchup between two old guys.
Meanwhile, the second strand of the narrative has taken a very different form.
In last week’s State of the Union address, Biden assumed the posture of a wartime president. He began by quoting from one of Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 speeches.
Then, the president once again depicted Trump and his supporters as threats to “democracy.” Only this time, Biden implicitly linked that alleged threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin. No careful observer could miss the connection as Biden positioned himself as the champion of “democracy” at home and abroad.
Thus, the two strands of the anti-Trump narrative defeat one another.
On one hand, according to the narrative, voters have shown no enthusiasm for Trump. And on the other hand, they have shown so much enthusiasm for him that they imperil democracy itself.
Trump, meanwhile, has very clearly pivoted to the general election. And he appears poised to meet the establishment on all fronts.
Monday on Truth Social, the former president outlined three immediate priorities should he win the election.
“My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” Trump wrote.
One could scarcely imagine a starker contrast with Biden. Instead of ranting about imaginary domestic enemies, Trump promised border security, energy independence and justice.
Thus, with the election eight months away, the former president has rightly focused on illegal immigration and the economy. But he also has not forgotten the enemies who lurk in the bowels of the U.S. government.
In short, the freedom and prosperity of millions now depend on Trump’s return to the presidency.
And in the meantime, anything can happen.
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