Can Donald Trump Win in 2024?

Ignore the polls, pundits, and "Trump can’t win” crowd—the ONLY thing that matters is how five states vote fourteen months from now.

Given my long history of accurately predicting statewide and national elections, I get asked this question a lot. The short and obvious answer is: absolutely! We are fourteen months from the November 2024 election so lots can and will change between now and then. Think back to September 2019 when Donald Trump looked like a very strong candidate to win reelection and Joe Biden looked like a fading has-been in the Democratic Primary. We then got hit with the COVID virus out of China, which shattered our then strong economy, decimated our schools, and killed over a million Americans. Despite his years of borderline, if not over-the-line, racial statements, Biden got rescued by African-American Rep. James Clymer in South Carolina and then went on to win the nomination. Even after five years of relentless and false attacks against Trump, the suppression of corruption among the Biden Family, $500 million in Zuck Bucks to get-out-the-vote in Democrat areas, and radical new voting changes that violated state laws, by a razor-thin spread of 43,000 votes in three states, Biden “won” the presidency.

While Biden can again campaign from the basement of one of his many homes to hide his frailty, he now has a record known as Bidenomics that voters will judge him on. That record includes high inflation, stagnant wages, higher costs, millions of illegal immigrants and cartel drugs flooding across the border, foreign policy defeats, radical left-wing policies on everything from energy to cars to ceiling fans, and possibly a recession in the coming year. Assuming House Republicans continue to reveal damning aspects of the Biden Family corruption and move forward on impeachment hearings, Biden can no longer run as the anti-Trump…his corruption is unparalleled in U.S. history. Due to these issues, I believe Biden will announce he is not running for reelection sometime around December 1, 2023, after a visit to The White House from Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and other Democratic bigwigs. As I’ve said for six months, I’d put my money on a Gavin Newsom-Gretchen Witmer ticket (in no particular order).

In terms of the Republican Primary, barring a major health crisis like a stroke or a heart attack, Trump will win the nomination. He simply has too firm a lock on at least 40% of the Republican primary voting base. I don’t believe any of the trials will do enough or any damage to him to change that fact. In fact, in a recent poll of D.C. residents (i.e., possible jurors), a solid 28% were unsure if Trump was guilty plus another 8% thought he was innocent, so Trump only needs to find one person of this 36% on his jury to win. People need to get over the personality of Trump and realize that many Republicans strongly support Trump because (1) they, like me, absolutely loved the policies pushed by the Trump Administration, (2) rightfully believe the frauds committed against him by the Left did more damage to our republic than to Trump (and will be used against any Republican anyway), and (3) enormously value the fact that, like Abraham Lincoln famously said of Ulysses Grant, he fights back relentlessly. The biggest question facing Republicans is who would be the best Vice Presidential candidate to join Trump on the ticket that gives Republicans the best chance to win.

As a quick aside to those concerned about Republicans who really don’t like Trump, do you really believe they will vote for a Democrat or not vote? Think about what is at stake in the wake of the pandemic and four years of Biden’s progressive governance—possible Supreme Court nominations; renewal of Trump’s tax cuts and higher taxes; possible war with China; more inflation and high prices at the grocery store and gas station; unilateral energy disarmament despite our vast energy resources; continued free speech suppression; more woke ideology in our schools and no protections for our kids from transradicalism; greater weaponization of our justice system and the FBI; and increased centralization of political power in Washington, D.C. Any Republican who elects not to vote for Trump in the general election given what is at stake likely needs to stop calling themselves a Republican.

At any rate, according to the Real Clear Politics average of the ten surveys conducted since August 11, Biden leads Trump 44.7% to 44.0%, or by a mere 0.7%. These ten surveys all sampled registered voters (versus likely) and reached 17,214 voters, which would make them collectively a fairly solid sampling. I don’t suspect those numbers will change much after Biden makes way for Newsom. Thus, we know the 2024 election will again be a very close one. Too many voters are firmly set on which party they will vote for making it highly unlikely the predictable red or blue states will switch sides in 2024. That leaves a small subset of voters in roughly five states: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. I think Michigan has gone back to being a lean blue state and don’t believe New Hampshire, New Mexico, or Virginia are toss-up states. With Trump struggling the most with suburban white women and the likelihood that Witmer will be on the Democratic ticket in some form, it makes the most sense for him to add South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to the ticket to appeal to that demographic, with the hope that she pulls enough of them back in the five states to push their ticket over the 270 Electoral Vote threshold.

I simply cannot emphasize this point enough: ignore the polls, pundits, and "Trump can’t win” crowd—the ONLY thing that matters is how five states vote fourteen months from now. Assuming I’m right on red and blue states repeating their historical slants, the Democratic ticket leads the Trump-led ticket by 241 Electoral Votes to 235 Electoral Votes, with 62 Electoral Votes in the mix. Of the five remaining states, I think Arizona and Georgia will revert back to Trump in 2024 and Pennsylvania will stay blue. That would leave Nevada’s six Electoral Votes and Wisconsin’s ten Electoral Votes on the table, with both parties needing to win Wisconsin to hit the 270-threshold (i.e., Nevada alone isn’t enough for either party). In 2020, Trump lost Wisconsin by 20,682 votes. For the record, I believe this analysis applies even if another Republican is somehow able to defeat Trump in the Republican Primary or he suffers a health issue. The states and voters are simply too committed to one side or the other to change simply because of who heads each party’s ticket. Thus, when someone claims Republicans would win if Trump wasn’t the nominee, they actually don’t have any evidence for that claim unless they can predict how Wisconsin will vote in November 2024, which of course they can't.

So, can Trump win? Most definitely, if he can pull some suburban white women back into the fold and flip 10,342 voters in Wisconsin.

ICYMI, here is my weekly interview on the Bruce Hooley Show where we discussed Dave Yost’s misleading fundraising appeal, U.S. Senator J.D. Vance’s federal anti-mandate legislation, and the latest Biden Family corruption.

P.S. In follow-up to my note last week on medical freedom, see Governor Mike DeWine's somewhat equivocal response to the question of mandates in light of U.S. Senator J.D. Vance's strong legislation to ban any federal mandates like masking and vaccinations.