On November 5, 2024, therefore in just under a year and a half, the 60th elections to choose the president of the United States will be held. To date twelve politicians from the Republican Party and three from the Democratic Party have officially announced their candidacy, and will compete in the primaries which are mandatory by law, even for the party that expresses the president. Of these, only two are women.
The “primaries”, the internal election system of each party, have different rules in each state. In a minority of states (for example in Iowa, in the past often the first state to vote, between January and February) real elections will not be held but “caucuses”, or particular political assemblies “from below” (here a guide to how they work) where local activists openly debate which candidate to support before voting for them, the vote is not secret and it is possible to change your mind during the session.
Once the primary phase is over – on paper in June, but often a winner already emerges between March and April – the two parties will officially indicate their candidate with a vote of the “delegates” elected with the primaries in each state at two national conventions between July and August. Although the complete calendar is not yet available, it is already known that the Republican convention will be held from July 15 for a week in Milwaukee, and the Democratic one from August 19 in Chicago, less than two hundred kilometers away.
The democratic politicians who will participate in the primary elections and in the caucuses organized by the party are the current octogenarian president Joe Biden, the environmentalist and anti-vaccine lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr. (great conspiracy theorist, son of the homonymous senator and nephew of President John Kennedy ) and Marianne Williamson, activist for various progressive causes and author of several self-help books.
Biden will certainly win, thanks to the consensus within the party and the legitimacy he has as president in office. In the last three and a half years it has achieved remarkable legislative results, including the approval of three ambitious laws – one to promote the recovery of the economy after the pandemic crisis, one on infrastructure, and one to reduce inflation – which provide for approximately 4 trillion dollars, in addition to an allocation of funds worth hundreds of billions to increase the competitiveness of some US industrial sectors with those of China, approved moreover in a bipartisan way.
The US economy is in excellent health and seems to be managing to maintain growth despite the increase in interest rates to fight inflation; Employment data surpasses expectations every month. In foreign policy, political and military support for Ukraine meets the approval of a large majority of the population, and in general the Biden administration is recognized for having rebuilt the alliance with the European Union and for having been particularly tough on the China. The 2022 midterm elections had a surprisingly good result for Democrats.
Despite this various national surveys, including that organized by ABC News and from Washington Post in April, they see President Biden struggling in the competition against the Republicans: the majority of those interviewed believe Biden is too old to serve another term (although there is only a four-year difference between him and Trump) and according to the poll 58 percent of Democratic voters would like the party to choose another candidate. There are also some concerns about the state of Biden’s campaign, which according to many observers is late and weak; However, Biden is also known to voters for a certain slowness and weighting in making relevant political decisions, as well as for having always been greatly underestimated by analysts and experts during his career.
Also, the other candidates aren’t there. Democratic Party politicians who could aspire to a presidential candidacy – Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg and of course Deputy Kamala Harris, to name only the main ones – have no intention of running, to avoid splitting the party or jeopardizing their own reputation by becoming “the person who challenged the president”. Not even the left current of the party, that of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, intends to challenge Biden.
The only alternative candidates to Biden in the Democratic Party at the moment are Kennedy Jr. and Williamson, who have some aspects in common: their political experience is zero, they have never held any elected office and they interpret marginal ideas and positions even in the Democratic Party itself .
Kennedy Jr. is an anomalous figure within the party: so much so that a recurring thing that is said about him in US politics is that he was in the wrong party. Despite having supported some causes dear to the progressive electorate, especially in the field of environmental regulation, Kennedy Jr. has in fact for twenty years been one of the most influential and popular representatives of the US anti-vaccine movement, as well as having contributed to spreading numerous conspiracy theories: for example on the relationship between mass shootings and the prescription of psychiatric drugs. These positions, in addition to the pro-Russian ones on the conflict in Ukraine, have made him popular especially among the more radical conservatives; in recent weeks he has participated in a live meeting on Twitter organized by Elon Musk, and has received words of esteem from Steve Bannon, the notorious former adviser to Donald Trump, and from Alex Jones, radio host and founder of the conspiracy site Infowars.
Marianne Williamson, mainly known as a writer and spiritual guru, is instead a less divisive figure but still on the fringes of the party, with a rather short political career. In 2014 you unsuccessfully attempted election to the House of Representatives; in 2019 she ran in the democratic primary, which she abandoned after a few months before she even began to vote. Her political platform takes up many of the “classic” themes of the Democratic Party, with a certain attention to limiting the influence of large companies on the political decision-making processes (the Council on Foreign Relations, an important research institute, he defined it “anti-corporate populist”).
The result of the primaries, on the other hand, is less obvious for the Republicans, also because it is realistic that the candidates already announced will be joined by others in the coming months. A first televised debate organized by the Fox News network will be held on August 23rd. Former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are the candidates so far with the greatest chance of success, followed by former Vice President Mike Pence and former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
Polls say that Trump – currently involved in two different criminal investigations – would be ahead of DeSantis: according to the Wall Street Journal, at the end of April 48 percent of voters intended to vote for the former president in the primaries, while only 24 percent De Santis. However, these results should be taken with great caution, and not only because there are more than six months left before the beginning of the primaries and there are still very few Americans interested in the competition: in fact, these are polls that measure national popularity, while the primaries are held state by state, with a calendar covering several months. The trend of the vote state after state can change many things.
However, as in 2016, the Republican primaries see a candidate who is clearly more popular than the others – Donald Trump – and many challengers who risk dividing the votes of those who do not want him. In 2016, Trump won the primaries in many states with just a third of the vote, as the rest were scattered among so many other names. Making Trump even more favored is the fact that at the moment few of the Republican contenders dare to openly criticize him, for fear of antagonizing a significant part of the electorate in which he has a large consensus, essential to be elected.
DeSantis presented himself to his potential voters as the less unpredictable, more solid, effective and consistent alternative to the former president. And it is interesting that he too, like almost everyone else, does so from the right when criticizing Donald Trump: reproaching him, for example, for the restrictions against the coronavirus or for Anthony Fauci’s advice or the success of the vaccination campaign.
The other two leading candidates, Pence and Haley, have worked closely with Trump, and then distanced themselves from him, especially after the January 6, 2021 assault on Congress. Although their campaign has just begun, both are struggling to find a own political identity. Pence is in an unprecedented position: since 1800 no vice president has ever challenged his president in the primaries. After resisting pressure from Trump to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election, Pence has alienated much of the Republican base, which considers him a traitor.
While probably the most conservative candidate overall, due to his religious fundamentalism, even among evangelical believers – who in theory should find their natural candidate in Pence, a radical Christian who abandoned Catholicism as a young man – the former Trump’s deputy is not garnering particular support. Nikki Haley has a more atypical profile – and according to some problematic for a part of the electorate – among Republican politicians: she is a woman and is the daughter of immigrants of Indian origin. She has a long political experience, with three terms as a congresswoman in the South Carolina House and two as state governor; for a long time it seemed to you that you could represent something new that could broaden the party’s base. However, you have changed your mind many times about Trump – sometimes appearing opportunistic and inconsistent – and the polls latest they give her after Pence.
In addition to this group of candidates, eight other Republicans have said they will participate in the primaries: according to polls and commentators, at this moment, the possibility of them passing the first rounds is almost nil. Among them are politicians already nationally known, such as North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina (who is also the only African-American Republican senator), former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, the only one who is criticizing Trump a lot and with great harshness; and lesser-known figures, including Indian-born financier Vivek Ramaswamy.
The reasons that explain this kind of candidacy with little chance are various but, in general, the will to improve one’s public position counts: in the case of already known politicians (as happened for Kamala Harris in 2020) this can mean earning the nomination to vice president, or pave the way for a nomination for a minor office; more marginal figures may aspire to get a TV pundit contract or a book publication, or more exposure for their careers.