Who will win the 2024 presidential election?

America’s Year next presidential election is here, which can only mean one thing: Speculation will continue to intensify over who will be the next person to occupy the White House.

While the election campaign began with a long list of competitors, the field has now been reduced to just two. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have blocked the delegates required to be Democratic and Republican candidates, respectively. While several independent candidates staying in the race for the long haul means the United States will experience its first presidential election rematch since 1956, an unprecedented battle between the oldest president to take office in Biden and the first-ever recognized former president guilty of a Trump crime. .

With the election now only 5 months away, pollsters and political scientists are fueling the debate over who will win the 270 electoral votes needed to secure a seat in the Oval Office. Who do experts think will be the next president of the United States?

According to the polls, who will win the elections?

Biden and Trump traded slight leads in the polls throughout the primary season. When it comes to the actual numbers, however, it is Trump who has carried the most weight in the majority of polls taken this year – a New York Times Poll Starting May 13, out of 1,000 Americans showed former President Biden leading in five of six key battleground states. Biden only trailed Trump in Wisconsin, by a margin of 47% to 45%. Although the accuracy of this survey has been questionedTrump’s direction appears to be consistent with that of May 14. YouGov/Economist survey out of 1,586 voters, Trump led 42% to 41% and on May 12 Morning Consult survey out of 10,243 voters who put him in the lead by 44% to 43%.

But while Trump has had the edge in the polls for most of the election season, a new element was added to the race in late May that could cause unprecedented change: the former president was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records regarding his hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. Early polls appear to show that the fact that the GOP nominee is now a convicted felon moderately changes public opinion. A May 31 Reuters/Ipsos poll of 2,256 Americans found that one in ten Republicans and 25% of independents are less likely to vote for Trump after his conviction. This is consistent with a June 2 ABC/Ipsos survey out of 781 Americans, 49% of respondents thought Trump should end his campaign because of his conviction. It remains to be seen whether this will be the case or not. enough to make a difference in November. Notably, the same Reuters poll found that the conviction made no difference to 56% of Republicans, while 35% of Republican voters said they were more likely to vote for Trump as a result of the conviction. However, “the potential loss of a tenth of his party’s voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger support of more than a third of Republicans,” Reuters said, given that much of the 35 percent Republicans would probably vote for him anyway.

But even before Trump’s conviction, on April 16 NBC News/Hart Research Poll It also confirmed what many in the United States likely suspected: Voters are becoming increasingly apathetic toward the 2024 election, on both sides of the aisle. The poll found that voters who said they had “high interest” in the race fell to a 20-year low and the majority had negative opinions on both Trump and Biden.

Other polls, however, show that the two men are tied. The same Reuters poll found that despite Trump’s condemnation, Biden and Trump were tied at 36%, consistent with the May 13 results. YouGov/Yahoo News Poll out of 1,198 voters who found them tied at 45%.

After conviction, there begins to be a more even split between candidates and polls. Of the 13 most recent confrontations in The FiveThirtyEight survey aggregate, Trump leads Biden in six, Biden leads Trump in four and the men are tied in three. These numbers are likely to continue to fluctuate as the election approaches, and both candidates are within two points of each other in all 13 polls.

Who do experts think will win the elections?

Even if polls tell one story, political analysts, pundits, and pundits can tell another. Many who study politics seem to think that even though Trump leads in most polls for most of the campaign, it will ultimately be Biden who gets a second term.

Biden is “seen as a moderate figure who has failed to transform a politically polarized country,” said Fox News’ Juan Williams. The hill, and this “contributed to its low approval numbers in 2023.” However, Biden’s low poll numbers “will be wiped out in a head-to-head rematch with Trump in 2024,” Williams said.

“Democrats have the power to make this year’s race a referendum on Trump rather than Biden,” Williams said. “With stock markets rising, unemployment falling, wages rising, inflation slowing, and the United States’ stance on Russia and China, Biden has a file to convince influential voters. »

Biden could also win re-election because “the strength of the president’s record is matched only by the strength of his party,” said Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg. MSNBC. Democrats have “won more votes in seven of the last eight presidential elections, which no party has done in modern American history,” Rosenberg said, and in the previous two years, “they prevented the historic struggle of the ruling party and had two remarkably successful elections. He added that the poll results “(continue) to excessively downplay Trump’s historical baggage and MAGA’s repeated electoral failures.” Trump’s aforementioned legal troubles are also notable; his sentencing in the financial silence case is scheduled for July 11, just four days before his nomination at the Republican National Convention. He is risk a prison sentencemeaning Trump could potentially spend part of the remainder of his campaign behind bars.

The bad news for Trump comes as Biden continues to raise money, most recently raised $26 million at a fundraiser with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton in March. The president “appears to have gained the advantage, in part because the Democratic Party apparatus and its fundraising capacity quickly united behind him,” The New York Times said. However, Trump now also enjoys the support of the Republican National Committee, having Trump loyalists were installed throughout a move that “underscores the rapidity with which Trump’s operation is taking over the operations of the Republican Party,” Policy said. And one positive that seemed to come for the former president was the form of financial assistance after his conviction, as part of the Trump campaign. report that he collected $141 million in May, bolstered by a $51 million increase immediately after he was convicted. That represents a marked change from Biden’s fundraising dominance in recent months, although the president still maintains a significant advantage in his campaign coffers.

Trump “wouldn’t win because America is in love with the former president, his policies, or the idea of ​​having a strong man leading the country,” but unease with Biden could allow him “to be elected president by winning even less than 46% of the vote. the national popular vote he received in 2016,” Perry Bacon Jr. said for The Washington Post. Although, as with anything related to Trump’s beliefs, it’s difficult to accurately predict what the public’s opinion will be.

And ultimately, trying to predict the outcome of an election is nothing more than guesswork, experts say — especially when it comes to polls. Although polls are an “effective way to measure public opinion,” that does not mean “that a poll taken today will accurately determine who wins the presidential election,” Philip Bump said. The Washington Post. Beyond that, even public opinion polls conducted before the election “almost certainly won’t show more than who is most likely to win,” Bump said. And the polls were wrong — sometimes considerably — in the past; Election Day 2016, The New York Times predicted that Hillary Clinton had an 85% chance of beating Trump.

Who else is in play?

The other X-factor in the race is the aforementioned Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Although he entered the race as a Democrat, Kennedy is now running as an independent and polls show he could potentially play the role of a third-party spoiler. This is something that Kennedy himself rejectedeven though some in the White House reportedly believe Kennedy “poses a real threat to President Joe Biden’s re-election chances,” Forbes said. However, while most analysts believe RFK Jr.’s candidacy was likely a problem for Biden, polls show it may be Trump who gets the short end of the stick; A NBC News Poll in April found that Kennedy would likely turn more voters away from Trump than away from Biden, similar to the aforementioned RMG and New York Times polls that also showed Kennedy moving more voters away from Trump. So while the White House and Democrats are worried about Kennedy, it appears that Team Trump is also worried because the former president “may regret RFK Jr.’s campaign.” Business Insider said. Notably, in the NBC poll that gave Biden the win, the president’s margin of victory narrows to 39% for Biden, compared to 37% for Trump, while Kennedy gets 13%, meaning RFK’s chance Jr. to play the role of spoiler is still very present. Other candidates also remain in the running, including Cornel West, Marianne Williamson and Jill Stein, but are unlikely to mount a challenge to either Biden or Trump.

Voters will get their first early glimpse of the general election on June 27, when Biden and Trump hold a CNN debate in what will be a historically early match. A second debate between the two men will take place owned by ABC News in September.