Facts About the 2024 Election

Amidst the general freakout by Democrats after last week's debate, it's probably worth thinking about the race

As a liberal voter in the United States and someone who first really started paying deep attention to politics for the 2000 election, I have a degree of comfort with ominous run-ups to election day for my preferred political party. I did not watch the first Biden-Trump debate for a range of reasons but, given the reaction to it, I think it’s probably worth stepping back and stating some fairly basic facts about the 2024 election.

---

Joe Biden is, as of 28 June, losing

It doesn’t matter which major model or tracker you look at, they all indicate that Biden is losing. Nate Silver, 538, the Economist, RCP, and Decision Desk HQ all give Trump a statistically significant edge in the race. None of these indicate a blowout, but the story is a consistent edge.

This aligns fairly clearly with the state of polling which indicates a toss-up at the national level and Biden underwater in basically all of the important swing states. The models make clear that Biden has a reasonable chance of pulling off wins in PA/WI/MI and keeping the presidency but that the majority of the time that does not happen.

There is not an easily quantifiable argument against this

The Biden campaign has pushed back against these statements but, fairly tellingly, it has not leaked polling that would counteract these narratives. Major campaigns in the United States are almost always engaging in their own polling and tracking. Given the state of raw panic amongst liberals, if the Biden campaign had hard data it could release to contradict the above facts, it would almost certainly do so. That it has not makes me believe such data does not exist.

Similarly, to the extent that the Biden campaign has attempted to engage with the press around this question it has been less than compelling. Axios is not exactly a friendly news outlet, but they are good at reporting. This article makes it clear that the campaign’s view of the polls is that they’re wrong, but without a real mechanical argument against them. That’s deeply concerning.

“Democrats” cannot force Biden out of the race

Post-debate you see a lot of people demanding that “Democrats” or someone force Biden to step down as the Democratic nominee. Regardless of the wisdom of this particular course of action, there is no actual lever through which anyone could do this. Biden has accrued enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination. Absent death or incapacitation, that means he will be the nominee. There is no structure within the nominating rules or practices that can be pulled to change that. The delegates themselves have no autonomy on how to vote (another win for liberal reformers in the late 20th century empowering Democratic primary voters that, in retrospect, seems problematic).

Are there things various high profile Democrats could do to try to get Biden to step down? Certainly, but fundamentally the only person who can make that decision is Joe Biden. At the end of the day, however this race goes forward unless Joe Biden decides it is in the interest of the country for him to stand down (which honestly would make him a more historically impressive figure for putting the country ahead of himself) or that he cannot continue, he will be on the ballot in November. And, all indications are that would result in the election of Donald Trump.