The 2024 Election

Starting this month, I will be analyzing and examining the 2024 elections for house, senate and the White House, from the primaries to the debates and everything leading up to Election Day. I will do my best to maintain an impartial manner, and only attempt to educate, rather than persuade.

Race to the White House:

With just one year out from the presidential election, there is a clear and sharp divide between the likely scenarios and the potential scenarios. As of writing this blog, Joe Biden and Donald Trump seem to be sailing comfortably towards their parties’ respective nominations, and yet they arguably couldn’t be less popular. On the left, incumbent president Joe Biden is facing near-record low approval ratings, and an overwhelming  majority of democrats think that their party should nominate someone else, especially someone younger. On the right, Donald Trump is in court almost every day of the week and has pled not guilty to all of his nearly 100 felony charges; despite this his Republican opposition is fractured to say the least, and no clear challenger has made much of a stand against him for the nomination. So what gives? Why does the 2024 election appear to be like it’s going to be a rematch of two of the most unpopular politicians each party has to offer, especially when both parties know they likely should nominate someone else?

Let’s start on the right, where the answer seems to be apparent: fractured opposition. As of this moment in time, there are nine candidates in the running for the Republican nomination, or, more accurately, Trump vs the anti-Trump movement. Earlier in the year many people thought that Ron DeSantis, fresh off of a landslide re-election victory in Florida would jump into the race and challenge Trump in a big way, but as the year draws to a close he’s made little more than a splash. The Iowa caucuses are just over two months away and the general consensus is that unless drastic changes start happening soon, Trump will begin his primary sweep towards victory. The issue the anti-Trump Republicans are facing right now is the lack of an opposition candidate. There’s so many candidates running against Trump that they’re eating each other alive in the debates and advertising and not one has risen above the rest to stand as a true challenger to Trump.

Moving to the left, the issue the Democratic Party is facing is an incumbent president with several anchors weighing him down. Arguably the most talked about and most prominent is his age. At 81, he is the oldest president this country has ever had, a record he sets every single day in office, and voters on both sides see aging politicians as an increasingly big problem. Biden’s age has become a bigger issue the longer he stays in office, and it has put him increasingly at odds with the Gen-Z and millennial voters that helped put him in power. Recent polling has indicated that the diverse coalition that helped elect Biden just three years ago has begun crumbling in a big way, as his numbers with the youth, Hispanic and male voting blocs have nosedived since his inauguration. Recently, Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota decided to throw his hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination to invite healthy competition and to address Biden’s floundering poll numbers. He has stated that while he thinks Biden has been a great president thus far, his polling and age mean that Biden needs to pass the baton along to a younger candidate to help usher in the next generations of Democratic candidacy.

Senate Showdown:

As campaigns progress through the fourth quarter of 2023, the senate appears to be the best outlook for Republicans. Democrats are defending all of the seats in the competitive battleground states, such as Nevada, Arizona and Michigan, and defending three seats in states Trump won in both 2016 and 2020: Ohio, West Virginia and Montana. Republicans only have two seats in states that could even be described as competitive, those being Texas and Florida. In Texas, Democrats have an entire roster of candidates to choose from, most prominent among them Collin Allred, a three term representative from Dallas. In Florida however, their hopes are far more tampered. In the running they have two former representatives, but national democrats aren’t holding out any hope of beating first-term senator Rick Scott. Elsewhere, almost all of their battleground incumbents are seeking re-election, the exception so far being Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow. In West Virginia, Joe Manchin remains mum on what his plans are, as he has repeatedly toyed with a presidential run or re-election bid, either as a democrat or as an independent. Lastly, in Arizona, democrat turned independent Kyrsten Sinema has also not revealed her re-election plans, which could lead to an unprecedented three-way race.

So far, six senators have announced their intentions to retire at the end of their terms. On the Democratic side: the aforementioned Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Tom Carper of Delaware, Ben Cardin of Maryland, and Laphonza Butler of California who was recently appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to fill the seat left vacant by Senator Dianne Feinstein’s death. On the Republican side there are only two: Mitt Romney of Utah and Mike Braun of Indiana, a first term senator who is retiring to instead run to succeed term-limited Governor Eric Holcomb. Among the few senators who have yet to announce their plans is Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders, one of the oldest people in the senate at 82 years of age. Because most of these seats are in safely partisan territory we have seen a lot of people throw their hats into the ring, especially since senate seats in these states only open up once every few decades.

In Delaware, the race to succeed Tom Carper is all but over; Representative for Delaware At-Large Lisa Blunt Rochester announced her candidacy shortly after Carper’s retirement announcement and she has received almost unanimous support both in and out of the state. In neighboring Maryland however, the race is still hotly contested. Representative David Trone, who represents the western panhandle and some of the D.C. suburbs and who has millions in personal wealth has far and away spent the most money thus far, though his challenger Angela Alsobrooks has received many high profile endorsements from state leadership, including Governor Wes Moore and Rep. Steny Hoyer, formerly the second highest ranking democrat in the House of Representatives. In Michigan, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Lansing has launched a strong campaign and was expected to easily waltz to her party’s nomination, but has received a primary challenger in Hill Harper, progressive activist and actor. And lastly in California, when the late Dianne Feinstein announced her retirement, the floodgates opened. As of this writing, there are 14 Democrats, 11 Republicans and 3 Independents running for the open seat in the nation’s most populous state. The big three in the race are a trio of high profile democratic representatives all of whom have raked in a combined $36 million. Adam Schiff of Burbank skyrocketed to national prominence as the House leader into Trump’s first impeachment; Katie Porter of Irvine became known around the country as a progressive advocate for lower healthcare costs, and her whiteboard lectures cross-examinations in house committees made her one of the democrats most sought after for news interviews; and Barbara Lee of Oakland has long been a progressive voice and a pillar of black leadership in congress, and is well known for being the sole congressional vote against the Afghanistan invasion in 2001.

So as we head into 2024, Republicans are two seats shy from a majority in the upper chamber, and with democrats defending the eight most competitive seats, including three in solid red territory, they look poised to win back control of the senate, even if they fail to recapture the White House. In West Virginia, a state Trump won twice with roughly 70% of the vote, popular Republican governor Jim Justice is running to unseat Manchin, and polls show he is well on his way to doing so. In Montana, former Navy seal and businessman Tim Sheehy appears to have the wind at his back as far as the Republican nomination goes, as he has already gained the support of Montana’s Governor Greg Gianforte, as well as two of their republican congressmen, Rep. Ryan Zinke and Senator Steve Daines, chair of the NRSC (Republican’s senate campaign fundraising arm). Montana’s Sen. Jon Tester is facing a steep re-election bid in a state Trump won by 15pts twice. And in Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown will be facing whichever Republican makes it through the crowded three-way primary. In his third term, Brown will be looking to outrun Biden by as much as possible in the former swing state turned Republican stronghold that went for Trump by 8pts twice in a row. So while anything can happen in the next year, Republicans are feeling awfully good about recapturing the senate, a likely possibility given the favorable territory, even if they lose the House and White House.

A House Divided:

Perhaps the most up in the air of the three, the House of Representatives and all of the variables we have yet to see unfold make predicting anything about the eventual outcome a total crapshoot. For starters, up to ten different states are looking at redrawn maps before the 2024 elections, with two states already enacting new maps. In Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled that the previous map was a violation of the Voting Rights Act and that a new map needed to be drawn to add another majority-minority district (a district in which a majority of the voting population are minorities, used so minority populations are able to elect representatives that accurately represent them), and such a map became law on October 5th. The other map passed thus far is in North Carolina, where just last year republicans won a supermajority of seats on the state supreme court, and used the opportunity to redraw the maps to be more favorable to their party. The new maps will give republicans at least 10/14 seats and give democrats 3/14, with one seat leaning democratic but still within the realm of competitiveness. Other states with possible new maps include Florida, Georgia and New York.

In the past six weeks, the house has seen an unprecedented level of chaos, caused primarily by the successful effort to unseat House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in early October. In his absence, republicans took almost three weeks to settle on a speaker candidate who could get all the votes necessary to win the speakership election, and, after unsuccessful bids by three candidates (Scalise, Jordan and Emmer) the house GOP settled on Mike Johnson, a fourth-term representative from Shreveport, Louisiana. Democrats have already leapt at the opportunity to use Johnson’s position on abortion, as well as his 2020 election denial to paint him as a radical MAGA republican, and they have already run ads in swing districts labeling moderate republicans as extremists by voting for him. Speaker Johnson faces a number of tightrope acts ahead of him, including how to avoid a government shutdown later this month, how to handle aid to Israel and Ukraine, and how to keep his narrow house majority together in order to pass legislation.

House Democrats are hoping they can capitalize on the fractured Republican majority in order to retake the House next November, and they have ample opportunity to do so. Including the new district in Alabama, there are 19 seats currently represented by Republicans that voted for Biden in 2020 compared to only eight seats represented by Democrats that voted for Trump. With each consecutive election seeing fewer and fewer ticket splits, the 2024 House elections will most certainly come down to the wire and will be a test of strength for many freshmen Republicans from California to New York.

One of the key factors to watch regarding the house elections will be the primaries, which proved to be where many of last years swing races ended poorly for Republicans. In 2022, outspoken Trump critics were heavily targeted by a large portion of the GOP, often successfully. Of the 10 representatives who voted to impeach Trump in his second impeachment trial, only two of them remained in the house following the 2022 midterms: Dan Newhouse of central Washington and David Valadao, who represents a Central Valley district in California that voted for Biden by 13 points. People such as Liz Cheney, Tom Rice and Peter Meijer were primaried out in favor of “more conservative” Trump supporting candidates. And yet last year, in many races where the more Trump-aligned candidate was nominated, Republicans failed to win the general election. Such was the case in Washington’s 3rd, a Trump district that elected a more moderate Democrat, or Ohio’s 9th, another Trump-won district along the northwest strip of Ohio centered around Toledo, where the Trump selected candidate lost spectacularly to incumbent democrat Marcy Kaptur by more than 13 points.

This year, primaries will be an early indicator to which half of the Republican Party is stronger going into the general election: will the Trump wing of the party continue to show primary strength even after a seemingly dismal showing or will the more moderate, non-Trump wing break through and nominate candidates they think are more electable? The other half of the primary question is this: will there be any significant primary challenges against those Republicans who voted to oust Speaker McCarthy? Of the eight who voted to oust him, one, Ken Buck of Colorado, has already announced his intention to retire at the end of his term, and a second, Matt Rosendale of Montana has been hinting for months that he is interested in jumping into his state’s senate race. The remaining six, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs and Eli Crane of Arizona, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Bob Good of Virginia will likely all receive primary challenges in some capacity, and their paths going forward after taking a stance that has put them seriously at odds with the rest of their party in the house will be a fascinating path to watch.

The last aspect of the house races we need to take into consideration are retirements. As of this writing, 23 representatives have announced their retirements at the end of this cycle. Of those representatives, 16 are democrats and 7 are republicans, and 15 are running for a different elected office. So far, the eight "pure retirements" (reps retiring from public office entirely) are: Grace Napolitano, D-CA (oldest member of the house), John Sarbanes D-MD, Earl Blumenauer D-OR, Jennifer Wexton D-VA, Derek Kilmer D-WA, Debbie Lesko R-AZ, Ken Buck R-CO, Victoria Spartz R-IN, and Kay Granger R-TX. Blumenauer, Granger and Napolitano have each been in the house since the 1990's while Wexton, Lesko, Buck and Kilmer were elected in the 2010's. Kay Granger is currently the highest ranking member retiring thus far, as she is currently the Chairwoman of the powerful Appropriations committee. None of these seats are expected to be competitive in the 2024 election, with the two most competitive seats are both D+6, bluer than any seat currently held by Republicans. With the filing deadlines for congressional candidates in seven states (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Ohio, Texas and North Carolina) set in place by the end of this year, we will likely see several more retirements in the coming weeks, as those seven states have a total of 147 representatives, some of which have been serving since the 1980's!

Miscellaneous Elections:

As I write this last section of this first blog, the polls have closed and races have been called for the 2023 Elections. I'll be briefly explaining the races and their significance (if any) on 2024. Starting with the governors races, two states held elections to decide whether their governors deserved a second term. In Mississippi, Republican Tate Reeves faced an unexpectedly strong challenge from Brandon Presley (Elvis' cousin), and despite approval ratings that often dipped into the negatives, he won re-election in the deeply Republican state. In fact, as the results have landed (with more than 95% of the vote in), Reeves' 4.5pt victory is smaller than his contentious 2019 victory of 5.5pts. In equally Republican Kentucky however, incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear managed to secure re-election by 5pts, a significant improvement from his razor-thin victory just four years ago. His opponent, Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron trailed in all of the polls leading into the race, and Beshear's impressive approval ratings were reflected in his improved margins in nearly every county. Cameron, once seen as a rising star in the Republican Party did break one glass ceiling though; in getting his party's nomination, he became the first black nominee for governor of Kentucky in the state's history!

Now to Virginia, the state in which Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin stunned the nation two years ago with his victory over former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Democrats saw much improvement. All 140 seats in the state assembly were up for grabs, and democrats won 21/40 seats in the state senate, keeping it in their control, and 51/100 seats in the house of delegates, flipping it into their control, and establishing newfound majorities in both. This came as reports over the past several weeks implied that Gov. Youngkin was waiting until after the elections to decide whether or not to throw his hat into the ring for the 2024 Presidential election, likely hoping for a strong Republican showing to boost his national image once again. Democrats in the state had been using abortion as one of their main party platforms, arguing GOP plans to enact a 15-week abortion ban in the event of their taking majorities in the legislature would not stop at 15 weeks. Virginia is one state in which abortion proved to still be a winning issue for Democrats as they head into 2024, just as it was a winning issue in 2022.

The final state to discuss is Ohio which, despite not having any races for elected office did have two marquee referendums which give a sharp insight into 2024. Issue 1 would enshrine the right to abortion into the state constitution (though still enabling the legislature to ban the practice after 23 weeks except in cases where the mother's life is in danger). Issue 2 would legalize marijuana possession and the sale of it for people 21 and older. Both referendums passed with 57% of the vote, and turnout was almost exactly 2/3 of the 2020 presidential election, an impressively high turnout rate for a state with no elected officials on the ballot. As Democrats look to 2024, their string of victories in a post-Roe v. Wade world show that capitalizing on abortion, and more importantly Republicans' stances on it is a winning issue.

With less than a year away until the 2024 elections, both parties have a lot of choices and data to sift through as they prepare to kick their campaigns, presidential and congressional, into high gear. Though the lessons they will learn from this years elections have yet to be seen, I predict we will see Democrats lean into the abortion message even more, and you might start to see Republicans in swing states start to back off of the subject entirely. Republicans are now facing a very clear crisis: fix your messaging or face a third year of disappointing election results. But how will they reshape their image and will it be enough to win back the electorate are questions that are not yet determined.

Next Update: December 2023

I hope this was an enjoyable/informative read for some of you out there, if you have any questions or comments please comment, I'd love for healthy discussion to take place here!