The 2024 election officially kicked off on Monday, with around 100,000 voters braving historically freezing weather to participate in the Iowa caucus. And to the surprise of absolutely no one, Iowa caucus-goers overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump, prompting calls in his favor only 33 minutes after doors closed at the caucus sites. As of Thursday, Trump earned approximately 51% of the vote, with Ron DeSantis following far behind at 21%. Nikki Haley, who’s been prompting headlines about a surge in recent weeks, came in third at 19%, with Vivek Ramaswamy trailing behind her at a meager 8%. (Ramaswamy suspended his campaign after the results came in on Monday night and he endorsed Trump.)
There are still a few more contests to come: Haley is polling much closer to Trump in New Hampshire than she did in Iowa (though the Iowa results could blunt her impact a bit) and DeSantis’s campaign might feel some renewed energy after his second-place win. But it’s possible that the Republican nomination will be more or less sewn up after the South Carolina primary on February 24 or Super Tuesday on March 5, bringing us closer to the inevitable 2020 repeat we’ve all been dreading: Biden vs. Trump.
In a year in which democracy is apparently on the line, we have an election many people don’t want. Trump, who is inundated with court cases — he did, after all, allegedly try to overturn the 2020 election — still has strong support from his base, but he’s having a harder time with more moderate Republicans and with independent voters, plus Democrats hate him. Approval ratings for President Biden, on the other hand, keep dipping lower and lower, particularly among young voters, who backed Biden by a considerable margin and helped propel his victory four years ago. Biden’s repeated refusal to call for a ceasefire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war — where the Palestinian death toll has reportedly topped 24,000, according to Palestinian authorities — has hurt his polling with voters under 35, with the overwhelming majority of voters ages 18-34 disapproving of his handling of the war.
That, coupled with other factors like Biden’s more recent approval of new drilling projects and the Supreme Court strike down of his student loan forgiveness program, have left some voters wondering if they’ll just stay home in November. As Teen Vogue reported this week, only 49% of young Americans ages 18 to 29 say they’re planning to vote in 2024, according to a recent poll, down from 57% at this point in the 2020 cycle. Young voters interviewed for the piece cited a number of reasons they’re considering skipping out, including dissatisfaction with Biden’s job performance, his support for Israel, frustration with the Democratic Party, and the belief that their vote in a solid red or blue state doesn’t matter. For all of Biden’s insistence that democracy hangs in the balance, people don't seem to be compelled to participate in democracy. The Biden/Trump matchup, where one candidate is extremely unpopular and the other is under indictment, makes it hard for young voters to believe that democracy is thriving in the US.
So how did we get here?
For one thing, a former president running against the incumbent for another term is rare and it’s thrown a wrench into the normal primary structure, which is typically the best way for all Americans to participate in the democratic process. On the Republican side, Trump has refused to participate in traditional campaigning, skipping the debates in favor of rallies and friendly interviews. Debates are opportunities for primary contenders to introduce themselves to voters, but Trump needs no introduction and there’s no mechanism to force him onstage. This means he hasn’t had to answer any hard questions about policy or his litany of alleged crimes (not that these things would sway many voters, considering the majority of Republicans don’t care about Trump’s legal woes). And no, an unchecked town hall doesn’t count. DeSantis, who some had expected to fare well among primary voters earlier in the cycle, has flailed on a national stage, and few primary candidates have bothered going after Trump while campaigning, preferring to duke it out with their fellow second-place contenders. And GOP voters are riding high on memories of “better” pre-COVID times, which makes them more likely to rally behind Trump.
On the incumbent side, once Biden decided to run again, there wasn’t going to be much of a primary for the Democrats. It’s uncommon in the modern era for an incumbent president to face a real primary challenger. (In 1980, Ted Kennedy ran a tough primary campaign against Jimmy Carter and lost, and then Carter lost to Reagan.) This year, despite Biden’s dismal approval numbers, there is no viable alternative (neither US Representative Dean Phillips nor Marianne Williamson, who are challenging Biden, will do much to overtake his chances). Think tanks have been downplaying concerns over his falling youth polling numbers and the increasing criticism of his foreign policy decisions. Rather than listening to that criticism or offering voters a road map for a better future, the Biden campaign has been focusing its messaging on the threat Trump poses to democracy. And while it’s true that a second Trump term would be disastrous for the country, that specific threat of democratic decline might not be what spurs young voters.
In fact, democracy itself has been dwindling for years. Plus, because of the way the Electoral College functions, as more and more voters are clustered in decidedly red and blue states and cities, the election ends up largely in the hands of small pockets of swing districts, significantly reducing the power of a vote. As the Washington Post reported last month, in the last election there were only 10 true swing states targeted by campaigns, down from an average of 26 swing states targeted from 1952 to 1980. In 2024, the Post reported, campaigns will likely focus on the smallest segment of voters in modern history.
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With those numbers, it’s hard to have confidence that your vote matters, and, considering how politically polarized the country is, that your chosen candidate will be able to make a significant difference. Even some of the Biden administration’s political agenda — like the expanded child tax credit or his student loan forgiveness plan — were steamrolled by a divided Congress and a right-wing Supreme Court.
Elections do matter and there are efforts the Biden campaign could make to try to win back young voters, starting with drastically changing direction on Israel and Gaza. Beyond that, he could talk more about protecting access to reproductive health, the importance of appointing federal judges and future Supreme Court justices, accomplishments like the Inflation Reduction Act, and, in general, take the concerns of young voters seriously and not simply tell them to vote because the other side’s worse. It is also possible that the threat of another Trump term will galvanize voters as we get closer to November, but the Democrats can’t (and shouldn’t) bank on that.
The system is still broken, though, and I’m not sure how it gets fixed. Democrats need to keep in mind that young people don’t feel as compelled to side with a party that isn’t listening to them. They need younger candidates who are more in touch with the needs of young voters. Republicans, meanwhile, need to free themselves from the grip of MAGA, even though they probably won’t. For now, though, these two are what we’ve got. On to New Hampshire.
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