Will Trump Be the Nominee in 2024?
Ugh probably
Donald Trump is likely to buck the historical trend by winning the Republican nomination in 2024. He’s not as dominant a figure as he was when he was president—and his legal problems could still bring him down—but there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the Republican party capable of challenging him directly.
Politicians who lose a general election for president don’t usually get another shot at the presidency. Recent incumbent presidents who lost their reelection bid have not run again. George H.W. Bush didn’t run against Bill Clinton in 1996. Jimmy Carter didn’t run against Ronald Reagan in 1984. Gerald Ford didn’t run against Jimmy Carter in 1980. None of them seemed likely to win a rematch against the president who had defeated him. Neither has any recent major-party losing candidate—not Hillary Clinton, not Mitt Romney, not John McCain, not John Kerry, not Al Gore, not Bob Dole, not Michael Dukakis, not Walter Mondale, not Hubert Humphrey—been their party’s nominee again. No one has lost a presidential election and run again since Richard Nixon defeated Humphrey in 1968 after having lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960.
Donald Trump is—as he so often is—a special case. I wrote in my last post that recent history suggests President Biden is likely to run in 2024. The same history suggests—all else being equal—that Trump is unlikely to run again. He was an unpopular president and is an unpopular private citizen. A majority of Americans consistently say they have an unfavorable opinion of him. His dedicated supporters are more than matched by the broad opposition he inspires. The only time in American history a president has ever won a second term after losing a reelection bid was when Grover Cleveland beat Benjamin Harrison 130 years ago. Many Republican leaders would prefer to nominate someone else, if only because Trump seems likely to lose a rematch with Biden.
But Trump clearly has not moved on. He tried to change the results after it was clear he lost the last election, instigated a riot to prevent the electoral votes from being certified, and purportedly told aides he was “just not going to leave.” He spread rumors last year that he would somehow be “reinstated” as president. He’s still contesting the election now almost two years after Biden took office—he tried to get the speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly Robin Vos to undo the 2020 results as recently as July—and attacks any Republican who won’t say the election was rigged. By continuing to contest the 2020 election Trump keeps his followers engaged and keeps himself at the center of political attention. He also makes it harder to prosecute the wide array of criminal investigations into his activities and civil suits against him. Trump can’t concede his loss, because his whole persona depends on the fiction that he’s not a “loser.” It seems unlikely to me that Trump will sit out the presidential election after he spent the last two years trying to return to office.
Nor has the Republican Party moved on from Trump the way it did from Romney or McCain. Trump has spent the last seven years systematically targeting and purging any Republican who doesn’t support him without question. The result is that the Republican Party has become a political personality cult, unified not by adherence to any particular ideology or set of beliefs, but by loyalty to Trump. Anyone who puts any principle ahead of agreement with Trump—even by just insisting on speaking the truth—is in practice no longer a member of the Republican Party in good standing. Republicans like Mitt Romney and Mike Pence who have defied Trump have been marginalized or pushed out of the party entirely. Only two of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after January 6 ended up being nominated for Congress again. January 6 Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, who had been the third-ranking Republican in the House, lost her primary by almost 40 points to Trump’s candidate.
Trump’s dominance has left the Republican Party denuded of anyone capable of competing with him for the support of primary voters. While there are signs that some Republicans are ready and even eager to move on from Trump—and that they know that he may not be their best bet to retake the presidency in 2024—his potential rivals seem to lack his charisma. Instead, they derive their popularity largely from him, either by taking their cue from him or by closely copying him. Realistically, they’re just jockeying to be his understudies, so that if he falters or looks vulnerable they’ll be able to step in.
One thing that could prevent Trump from winning the Republican nomination is his health. He’s a couple of years younger than Biden—and like Biden has access to fantastic health care—but a man Trump’s age still has something like an 8% chance of dying in the next two years. He could also develop a health problem that affects or appears to affect his ability to run for president. Doubts about Trump’s health could give his rivals for the nomination an opportunity to run against him without directly attacking him in a way that offends the Republican base.
But Trump’s legal problems may be the most serious obstacle to his winning the Republican nomination. These include several suits for inciting the Capital riot on January 6, investigations into whether his businesses committed fraud or financial crimes, a criminal investigation into attempts to influence the 2020 election in Georgia, and a criminal investigation into whether he stole and mishandled highly sensitive government documents. The number and strength of cases against him suggests he’s in serious legal jeopardy. If he is indicted or convicted—and it may be hard to hold the former president accountable—it wouldn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t eligible to run, although the 14th Amendment does bar any public official who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office again. Either way, if his legal problems dampen enthusiasm for him or raise doubts about whether he’s capable of winning, he could be vulnerable to a primary challenge.
Prediction markets and forecasting platforms mostly agree that Trump is the favorite to win the Republican nomination. Metaculus currently gives Trump a 51% chance of being the nominee; Polymarket gives him a 47% chance; and Insight Prediction gives him a 45% chance. PredictIt is a substantial outlier—and probably an arbitrage opportunity—giving Trump just a 30% chance of being the nominee, behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The consensus is that DeSantis, who is clearly preparing a presidential run, is the most likely to win the nomination after Trump, with prediction markets giving him somewhere between a 28% and 36% chance. DeSantis does seem to be the standout among a weak field of candidates, but I think that’s too high more than a year ahead of the primaries for a governor who is not a household name among ordinary voters.
My Forecast
Trump has a 57% chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2024
DeSantis has a 16% chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2024
British online betting exchange Betfair is offering almost 5-1 odds against Biden winning reelection—implying he has just a 17% chance of a second term!—but under no circumstances should anything in this newsletter be considered financial advice. I did realize after I sent my last post that I got the chance a man Biden’s age will die in the next two years wrong—it’s 12%, not 8%—and as a result moderately overestimated Biden’s chances. I’ve corrected that post to show that I think Biden actually has an 80% chance of winning the nomination and a 47% chance of being reelected. As always, if you found this post valuable, please support my work by sharing it with others.
I imagine some of the predictit issue is that it might be closed down by the time those resolve.
I love your articles. How do you go about finding base rates? Also, how might liquidity affect the arbitrage? You are very busy; thank you so much for reading my comment. :)