A second Trump term: from unthinkable to probable

When Donald Trump left office in January 2021, his political career seemed over. It wasn’t just Democrats who thought so. “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Tucker Carlson wrote privately when he was still the host of Fox News’ most popular nightly show. “I really can’t wait.” Carlson didn’t get his wish. Our statistical forecast, which we released this week, gives Trump a two-in-three chance of winning in November. This is the same model, plus some refinements, that made Joe Biden a strong favorite to become president in 2020. Tested on election data from previous elections (without knowledge of the outcome), the model gave Barack Obama roughly the same probability of winning in 2012 at this point in the race that it gives Trump now. Like most pundits, he thought Hillary Clinton was more likely to win in 2016 — a reminder that models, while offering a rigorous way of thinking about the world, are not crystal balls.

How has Trump gone from being expelled from his party to being more likely to win another term than not? Incumbent presidents and prime ministers are performing poorly everywhere. The wave that drenched Narendra Modi in India and is sure to sweep Rishi Sunak away in Britain can be seen on the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts. Biden’s approval ratings are among the worst for an American president at the end of his first term. The only thing that makes them respectable is comparing him to Sunak, Justin Trudeau or Emmanuel Macron, whose numbers are even worse. Inflation may be to blame. Biden would like the election to be about preserving democracy. Undecided voters seem to care more about the price of eggs.

Trump may have 34 felony convictions, but Republican leaders are backing him anyway, thereby giving rank-and-file Republicans permission to vote for him again. In February 2021, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, described Trump as “morally responsible” for the violent invasion of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob a month earlier. Yet in March of this year he endorsed Trump. And rewriting history isn’t limited to Republican bigwigs. Ordinary voters are doing it, too. When Trump left office, 41% of Americans called his presidency a success. Now, 55% do.

The war in Gaza, which divides Democrats and unites Republicans, has not helped Biden. Added to all this has been a certain political ineptitude in his campaign. When his team has tried to bribe voters, for example by forgiving student loans, it has paid off the wrong ones. College-educated Democrats are the party’s most loyal constituency. Such maneuvers are most effective when offered to swing voters, an aspect Trump understands best (as evidenced by his musings on the possibility of making tips tax-free in Nevada). When Biden has triangulated, for example at the border (where the administration’s policy is now notoriously tough), he has acted so quietly that voters have barely noticed.

Much can change between now and November. The first debate, on June 27, will be unusually important. But what is most striking about this year’s polls is how little they have moved. Trump is the first former president — and the first front-runner — to have been convicted in court. Yet rather than changing their minds about him, Republican voters have changed their minds about the courts. The share of those who told YouGov, a pollster, that a convicted felon should be allowed to be president rose from 17% in April to 58% in June. Meanwhile, 46% of all registered voters seem certain that Biden has done something illegal involving his son Hunter (which he has not). The younger Biden’s conviction on gun charges will likely reinforce the false impression of equivalence between the two candidates.

Most Americans have already decided who they will vote for, and considering that Biden has been trailing in national polls all year, even if only by a small margin, that is very worrying. The electoral college still favors Republicans, so the incumbent president needs to be ahead to have any chance of winning. His path to victory is awfully narrow: He must win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (plus Omaha’s lone electoral college vote) to get to 270. If he loses any of those, he will have to win Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, or North Carolina, where he is currently several points behind in the polls. In other words, there is no clear Plan B.

Biden’s political team knows this, but is putting on a calm face to the outside world, hoping that as the election approaches, voters will remember why even Carlson was fed up with Trump by the end. Biden is presenting himself as if he is winning this race, but he is not. Read more of our coverage of the US election year.

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