Author’s Note: This piece was originally published on May 7, 2023.
Although not impossible, it is highly unlikely that a Republican could win the presidency in 2024 absent an extraordinary circumstance. Among those would be a contested election decided by the House of Representatives. The candidate most likely to benefit from that development is Donald Trump.
Republicans, especially the consultant class, have yet to fully digest the implications of the 2022 election. It must now be assumed that Arizona and Georgia are out of play for Republicans, at least in presidential match ups. Likewise, it is now clear that Nevada, New Hampshire, and Colorado are no longer swing states, and haven’t been for some time. New Hampshire has not voted for the Republican nominee since 2000. Nevada and Colorado last went Republican in 2004.
Only one Republican candidate since Reagan—Donald Trump—has been able to win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania…and he could only do it once. Recent developments in Michigan and Wisconsin would seem to put those states ever further out of reach.
Most in the commentariat, both Republicans and Democrats, have blamed the GOP’s poor showing in 2022 on bad candidates and the polarizing effect of Donald Trump. What they fail to realize is just how radically the country’s politics have changed, particularly in the upper-middle class suburbs that were once the bulwark of the Republican party.
The cognoscenti also do not recognize that we have reached an era where performance is less important than other considerations such as identity, ideological purity, and good intentions. The days of “kitchen table” or “pocket book” issues, or even expectations of basic competency, are long gone.
The presidency has been decided by the House twice in U.S. History 1800 (Jefferson over Burr) and 1824 (Adams over Jackson). The first was the result of a circumstance unforeseen by the Founders in which the electors gave equal votes to both Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr. The second was due to multiple candidates splitting the vote. It wouldn’t be so hard to imagine a challenge from the middle by Never Trumper Republicans in 2024 doing the same.
A Republican nominee—any Republican nominee—is likely to get 234 Electoral College votes, but few more. This is the number of votes Trump received in 2020, less the one district vote Trump received in Maine. Likewise, by my count, Democrats can bank on at least 269 votes, one short of the total needed to win outright. A plausible third-party campaign, helped by favorable political winds, need only claim 35 electoral votes to deny the Democrats the majority they need to win. One can easily imagine Arizona (11) voting for a moderate Republican running independent of the traditional party. Others—Nevada (6), Colorado (10), New Hampshire (4), and Maine (4)—are admittedly a bit more speculative.
The decision would then be thrown to the People’s House, which if held by Republicans would be favorable to Trump. And that’s the catch: this scenario hinges on the GOP being able to hold on to the House in 2024, as the vote in an inconclusive election would be held by the new Congress.
And competitive third parties have not exactly materialized over the decades, despite quadrennial prognostications of their ascendance. Such speculations, along with a tied Electoral College and a presidential run by Michele Obama, seem to be mostly the fervid dreams of political junkies, or desperate journalists facing a deadline. Not including Donald Trump, who essentially led a third-party takeover of the Republican party, the most successful third-party candidate in recent memory, Ross Perot in 1992, won exactly 0 Electoral College votes. Prior to that, the only successful third-party run was made by George Wallace in 1968, garnering 46 Electoral College votes.
To be clear, this is not a prediction that a third-party bid will happen or be strong enough to prevent the Democrats from reaching 270 electoral votes if it does. It is, however, a statement of a hard truth that does not seem to have sunken in with Republicans: The big cities and their surrounding suburbs are lost to the GOP. Furthermore, it is difficult to win a state, even one that is otherwise red (say, Arizona or Georgia, but also Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania), when its major population centers (Phoenix, Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia) are as blue as blue can be. Absent some such scenario, the Republican nominee will find it very hard going in 2024.
The unfavorable climate for Republicans in a presidential race has probably been true for some time. Donald Trump was probably the only candidate who could have beaten Hilary Clinton, and he only won thanks to a singular, unorthodox campaign the likes of which we may never see again. If anything, the country’s political dynamics are now even worse for Republicans. A traditional head-to-head contest between a Republican—any Republican—and a Democrat, even Joe Biden, is almost certain to lead to victory for the latter.
Of course, a recession or a foreign policy debacle could make an alternative to Democratic leadership more attractive to voters. However, as we saw just a few months ago, against all historical precedents, the worst inflation in 40 years and an embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan, was not enough to sway voters from sending a clear message to Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats that the current course was unacceptable. And as we’ve seen in California, hoping that things get so bad that voters will be forced to vote for them hasn’t exactly turned out as Republicans hoped.
J.S. Scifo is a North County resident who has worked in national and state politics.
Comments 1
Good write-up. A big point is that the GOP has shifted more towards rural voters and rural voters have become less compromising with urban values. Suburbs used to lean right as many came from rural areas and settled in the suburbs post ww2 and the values held. To a degree they still do but its the GOP that has shifted to rural areas.
This is a doomed strategy. Though the constitution places a lot of (needed) protections for rural and agricultural areas like the electoral college and senator apportionment, it’s a doomed strategy to weigh everything on a segment that is increasingly small population-wise. Cities are where the people and the money are, and that there is no large city one can call conservative should be a big red flag.
Cities have a lot of problems and instead of staking territory there, the GOP has run for the wilderness. It’s going to be there for a long time until it rethinks its rural relationship. Look at CAGOP.