No One Is Looking Forward to the 2024 Presidential Election

Welcome to the election of dread.

If there’s one thing that voters of both parties—and independents—agree on, it’s that few are looking forward to the run-up to November 2024. The two leading candidates, Trump and President Biden, look to be heading for a repeat of 2020, and few see much to relish in that.

The two men are universally known, robbing the electorate of the potential to fall in love with someone new. “We know based on past performance what you’re going to bring to the table. There is nothing more to learn,” said Patrick Gray, a Democrat in Bay City, Mich. “I’m tired of it already.”

Within their own parties, Biden and Trump stoke plenty of anxiety to match whatever enthusiasm they can generate from the faithful. Polling suggests a substantial majority of Democrats don’t want Biden to run for office again. Trump remains the dominant force within the Republican Party, but many say they are open to someone new who doesn’t bring the former president’s combative divisiveness—or the distraction of a grueling court battle.

And no one can claim with a straight face that Biden, at 80 years old—or Trump, 77—represents the youthful vigor or embodiment of America’s bright future that many have found appealing in past presidential candidates.

Neither Biden nor Trump can even claim that a majority of Americans approve of his job performance in office, and so the potential rematch is shaping up to be a battle of who is less unpopular.

If 2020 is any guide, and if the two ultimately top their tickets come Election Day, it will be a razor-thin contest: Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 in the states that decided the election was less than 77,000 votes across four states, although he won the popular vote by seven million.

Trump’s court appearance this week to face charges of retaining and sharing classified national-security documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice reminded many voters of the acrimony they can expect in the coming months. Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Miguel Lainez of Columbus, Ga., an independent who voted for Trump in 2020, thinks prosecutors acted unfairly in charging Trump at a time when perceived crimes by Democrats go unpunished. But he also thought that this week’s arraignment shows that Republicans should pick a less-divisive nominee.

“We’re letting our anger and hatred for this man consume us,” said Lainez, 46, who works as an educational counselor. “If we can get someone new and meet halfway as Americans, [we can] work on things that make us better as a country.”

Few voters appear confident that 2024 will be about the issues many of them care about or that the polarization that has gripped the country will abate.

“We have a lot of work to do in education and homelessness, healthcare, and those issues keep dropping down the list of priorities,” said Newman, 41, an instructional coach in public schools. He pointed out that, as an Illinois resident, he is used to seeing elected officials convicted of crimes: Four of his state’s last 11 governors have gone to prison. Still, he said, Trump’s legal troubles were another sign of the divisions that have hampered the country.

When pollsters asked in 2010 whether the country had become so divided that the national government can no longer solve major issues, 45% agreed, while a larger share, some 50%, said the nation could unify despite its partisan differences. But when NBC News reran the question last year, some 70% said polarization prevented Americans from solving problems, and only 27% said unity was possible.

In a new survey released this week by the polling firm NORC, about 90% of both Republicans and Democrats said they believed that U.S. laws should be applied equally, that government should be accountable to the people it represents and several other principles. But only about one-third of each party thought members of the other party held those same views, a sign of deep distrust between the parties.

Some say they find the divisions clarifying. “The polarization is healthy, because it draws a distinct line,” said Matt Wells, 42, who lives in eastern Iowa, runs a cleaning business and volunteers for the GOP presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

But others yearn for what they see as a more civilized time. Jodi Johnson, a 62-year-old retired programmer in the San Francisco Bay Area, reflected on what she saw as an earlier model of political comity—the famously friendly relationship between President Ronald Reagan,

“So much anger, so much divisiveness has gone on,” said Johnson, who backed Biden in 2020, of the current moment. “Nothing’s going to be smoothed over. It just has to settle down.”

The danger for the ultimate nominees is that the sense of malaise that voters feel now could translate into a lack of enthusiasm at the polls in November 2024, when turnout could be a major factor in deciding the winner.

Barbara Curry, 83, a Democrat and retired telecommunications worker outside Atlanta, said she planned to vote for Biden, but with a distinct lack of fervor. She said that, 2½ years in, she has seen no benefits from his presidency: “I don’t see any difference that he has made.”

Even if Trump isn’t the Republican nominee, he is likely to remain an influential figure in the campaign and could possibly overshadow his party’s chosen candidate, who will have to work to maintain support from Trump loyalists at a time when the former president’s legal problems may be playing out in the courts and drawing prominent news coverage.

That appeals to his core supporters who see a silver lining in his prosecution. “They can indict him, they can arrest him, they can convict him, they can even put him in jail. He’s still eligible to run,” said Patrick Vigil, a self-described “MAGA Republican” in Albuquerque, N.M. “I think it’s actually helping him,” he added, saying the charges had acted like a boomerang to rally people behind Trump and help him raise money.

If that’s the case, it may be even harder for Trump’s challengers to break through and offer a fresh name in the 2024 election. That’s a shame, even for some Democrats, although having Trump on the ballot could help fuel turnout—for his opponent.

“I think it would have been rather fun to watch the Republican field brutalize each other in the papers and debates,” said Sabine Droste, a Democrat in Madison, Wis. “But I’m just afraid that the Trump situation is going to deprive the other candidates of their moment. This puts him at the center of attention.”

Write to Aaron Zitner at [email protected] and Simon J. Levien at [email protected]