To say it’s too early to start prognosticating about the 2024 election is an understatement. We’re only about a third of the way through President Joe Biden’s term, and a lot has happened even in the last few months that could have an impact far wider than this upcoming midterm or the next few elections after it. But that won’t stop us – after all we’re already eight months into a gentlemen’s bet on the 2024 Republican presidential primary!

As Biden continues to drop in the polls, his agenda continues to flag, and Republicans seem poised to take one or both chambers of Congress this November, the question of “will Biden win reelection” is a fair one to ask. We’re not ready to rate any states, make any projections, or confidently estimate any margins for that election.1This is two-and-a-half years away, give us a break. Two-and-a-half years ago Congress had not even begun public hearings for Trump’s first impeachment, Bernie Sanders had temporarily suspended his presidential campaign because of chest discomfort, and Hong Kong’s Chief Executive banned the use of face masks for public gatherings in response to protests. But we are ready to give you the second-best thing: historical context. There are a number of things we can infer about Biden’s chances of reelection given what has been experienced by his postwar predecessors.2We’re not comparing Biden’s prospects to the lamentable loss of John Quincy Adams for obvious reasons. (But hey, check out Floor Fight while you’re thinking about it!) Refining our comparison solely to postwar presidents is preferred because postwar presidents share a number of features that they do not share with predecessors, such as similar party and primary systems, the power and prominence of the presidency, and the modern era of polling and data. So, here are a series of historical observations in the postwar period that point to the opposite of what you may assume from his poll numbers: Joe Biden is in a good place to win reelection.

Incumbents usually win reelection to begin with

First of all, two-thirds of presidents in the postwar era who ran for reelection were successful. The incumbency advantage is weaker for presidents than for members of Congress, but is nonetheless significant. We discussed a number of these advantages in a piece on why Biden would retain Harris as his running mate in 2024. They include subsidized housing and transportation, universal name recognition, a campaign infrastructure that was already built four years ago (along with lists of voters and a large war chest of money), and access to other “soft” government resources that aren’t necessarily campaign-related but can’t hurt such as franking, television airtime, getting to issue official statements, and being called “the president.”

One seemingly apocalyptic piece of news regarding Biden’s (and Democrats’) political prospects is that of voters of color souring on the party, but even this has a pro-incumbent case if you look historical elections. There’s been much ado about the Latino and Black vote in the 2020 election. In 2016, Trump won 29% of the Hispanic vote and 8% of the Black vote. In 2020, he won 33% and 12%, respectively. This laser focus on the 2020 election ignores the reality of the last 20 years:

• Bill Clinton did better with Hispanic and Black voters when he ran for reelection (61% and 83% up to 72% and 84%). 
• George W. Bush did better with Hispanic and Black voters when he ran for reelection (35% and 9% up to 44% and 11%)
• Barack Obama did better with Hispanic voters when he ran for reelection (67% up to 71%), he did only marginally worse among Black voters though still received a higher share than any other presidential candidate in the last 30 years in 2012.

Incumbents just tend to do better across the board. And I’ll restate for emphasis that George W. Bush won 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004; a few points better and he actually would have won their demographic against the Democratic candidate John Kerry. And remember – Donald Trump did come close to winning reelection. A combined margin of less than 43,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin would have flipped the election for Trump; this is a closer tipping-point margin than it would have taken for Hillary Clinton to overcome Trump in 2016, when she needed about 78,000 combined votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. True to our overall theme, though, Biden’s defeat of an incumbent is much more impressive, considering he also picked up two states (Arizona and Georgia) that Democrats hadn’t won in over 20 years.

So, point one for Biden. He is – contrary to unpopular belief – the incumbent president. 

Almost every incumbent who didn’t face a serious primary opponent has won reelection

Of the four incumbents who have lost reelection since the end of World War II, all but one have faced a serious primary challenge. It started with Gerald Ford, who was challenged on his right flank by Ronald Reagan in the 1976 Republican primary and nearly lost the nomination, then went on to lose the general election to Jimmy Carter. Four years later, Carter himself faced a major primary challenge on his left flank from Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, then went on to lose to Reagan in the 1980 election. In 1992, incumbent president George H.W. Bush faced a less-dangerous but nonetheless annoying primary challenge on the right from conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, and went on to lose to Bill Clinton in the general election.

28 years later, after three consecutive two-term presidencies, Donald Trump would become the only incumbent president in the postwar era who lost reelection without any serious primary challenge.3Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld won exactly zero states and one delegate in the 2020 Republican presidential primary. Suffice to say, this is not what you’d consider a serious primary challenge. His poor handling of the major issues of 2020, which occurred well after the opportunity to primary him had passed (and after the Democratic primary had all but been settled, – more on that in a minute), are to blame for his loss. Despite facing no primary and thus no need to shore up his base, he failed to pivot to the center and instead pandered almost entirely to the right.

There’s a chicken and the egg question here – are incumbent presidents primaried because they’re already weak? Or does primarying them make them weaker? The answer is both: something has to be pretty askew between a president and their base for a serious primary challenge to emerge, but once one emerges, it inevitably makes them a weaker incumbent.

Ford lost reelection because he had to move to the right to fend off Reagan, giving Democrats the opportunity to seize the moderate middle. Carter lost reelection because he had to move to the left to fend off Kennedy, so Republicans seized the middle. And Bush is perhaps the clearest case as he fought back Buchanan and lost to the centrist Clinton. Every electoral incentive pushes a president to embrace the median voter if they can, and Trump blew it.

But that’s only half the story. On the Democratic side, Biden quickly surged in March to become the presumptive nominee – emerging from a crowded Democratic field as the moderate, compromise, consensus-driven candidate to take on an unpopular incumbent president. Though Trump still missed an obvious opportunity to meet Biden in the middle, leveraging his incumbency advantage (and the fact his base would have supported him even if he moderated his language a bit), the Democrats’ were able to avoid one of the most serious problems in the American presidential primary system: that they pull candidates to the left or right of the country compared to the incumbent. This almost always dooms the challenger when they go up against a non-primaried incumbent. Just ask Mitt Romney, John Kerry, and Bob Dole.

We don’t know for sure whether Biden will face a serious primary challenge in 2024, but it seems unlikely. Yes, he might face a challenge from some former Bernie Sanders campaign staffer or an Andrew Yang type. But the appetite from any current officeholder isn’t there. Thus far Biden has sat (as he always has) at the center of the Democratic Party; he’s satiated the Sanders wing of the party while embracing many of the ideas of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s more technocratic-populist flank too; and he’s well aware of the follies of antagonizing the moderate wing too, seeking rapprochement with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, and embracing every moderate Democrat’s favorite Republicans.

If Biden holds the center of his diverse party – which is something he’s been particularly good at doing over his 50 years in Washington – it is unlikely he faces a serious primary challenge and can pivot to where he is probably slightly more comfortable for the 2024 general election: the moderate middle. That’s point two for Biden.

The Two-Year Hump 

If you look at the net approval rating for most postwar presidents, you’ll notice a relatively uniform trend: after they take office, there’s a two-year decline in approval; then after the two-year mark they’ll often start to creep back up. The presidential “honeymoon” period is well documented, wherein all elected postwar presidents (save one, see if you can guess who…)4Here’s a hint: he’s also the only incumbent who lost reelection without facing a serious primary challenge. This is also a test to see if you’ve been paying attention. have experienced inflated approval ratings in their first six months. That held for Biden too, his approval rating was above 50% until August of 2021. But what’s happening nearly 18 months later for many of these presidents?

Two years after being elected is also when new presidents face their first midterm, which almost always goes against the party in power. In the postwar era, there have only been two midterms in which the sitting president’s party gained seats in Congress: 1998 and 2002. In 1998, Republicans were punished for their impeachment inquiry into Bill Clinton, and in 2002, President George W. Bush remained incredibly popular after 9/11. 

When a president’s party suffers a devastating midterm, especially when it results in the loss of one or both chambers of Congress, it tends to have several long-term effects on their political standing that often lead to their poll numbers creeping back up as they approach reelection. 

First, it causes a reawakening. Supporters of the party in power are often less motivated and more complacent when it comes to keeping their majority. Losing that majority has a pretty immediate and impactful effect on the calculus of both the losing party and the electorate. Suddenly all of those voters who sit out midterm elections wake up and realize that though their complaints against their own party seemed fair when they were in control, they now seem insignificant compared to their qualms with the new party in power. Remaining electeds have a change of mind about their internal squabbles, realizing their goal is now rallying to defeat the new congressional majorities and their agenda.

Second, among elected officials, it has a moderating effect. It helps that you can’t enact any permanent legislation without the opposition party, which tends to require compromise, but from an electoral standpoint – as we unpacked above at the presidential level – there is renewed incentive to remain as moderate as possible. After his midterm setback, President Clinton embraced the strategy of “triangulation” in which he rushed to the political center to cut off Republicans, largely ignoring his left flank. He pivoted to embrace religious freedom, welfare reform, and declared that “the era of big government is over.” Barack Obama did the same following his 2010 midterm “shellacking” by extending the Bush tax cuts and embracing spending cuts. By 2012, Obama was academically assessed based on his public policy positions to be the second-most-moderate postwar president behind only Dwight Eisenhower. In an exception that proves the rule, after losing 40 seats in the 2018 midterms, Trump failed to expand his appeal to moderates or liberals and continued to do things like tell Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to their own countries, lambast dead politicians, and face impeachment over pressuring the president of Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rival.

Third, the new congressional majority, emboldened by its win and its opportunities to leverage the investigatory and legislative tools of Congress, becomes overzealous. This is especially true in the case of Republicans winning control of a chamber of Congress as by the nature of their more homogenous party, they rely less on consensus-oriented governing, and their fringe is far more prone to antagonistic behavior. After taking control of Congress under both Clinton and Obama, Republicans forced unpopular government shutdowns and pushed partisan investigations. This is not to say Democrats did not pursue partisan investigations when they took control of the House in 2007 or in 2019 against unpopular Republican presidents, but their investigations and actions generally received majority approval. Republicans’ impeachment of Clinton was unpopular; Democrats’ first impeachment of Trump also polled more favorably than not.5As, of course, did Trump’s second impeachment – though that was after a presidential election and thus not as useful of an example. The “reign of terror” by an overzealous new congressional majority can backfire, especially when interparty schisms break out (see: Freedom Caucus circa 2015, discontent with Gingrich circa 1998), and the president’s party – who has spent years positioning, fundraising, and posturing – maintains a more disciplined approach. 

Given what we know about some of the members of the current House Republican Caucus, and the prevailing wisdom that Democrats will lose control of the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterms, we’re comfortable giving Biden a third point here. Right now, Democrats have struggled to find a foil for the midterms; after they lose control of Congress, the foil will become incredibly loud and incredibly public. Very little will make Biden look better than a Congress overshadowed by the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Lauren Boeberts of the world.

All of these things explain why, despite even the most massive of electoral setbacks in the midterms, presidents often handily win reelection. Truman’s Democrats lost 53 seats in the House in 1946 before Truman won the election in 1948. Reagan’s Republicans lost 27 seats in the House in 1982 before Reagan won a massive landslide in his 1984 reelection. Clinton’s Democrats lost 52 seats in 1994 and then he cruised to reelection in 1996. And, in the biggest midterm loss of the postwar era, Obama’s Democrats lost 63 seats in the House in 2010 before he won reelection in 2012.

Based on history, the president’s incumbency advantage gives him a strong start, buoyed by his political acumen in remaining at the non-primariable center of his party, and bolstered (counterintuitively) by his impending loss in the midterms. All three point to an early favorite in the 2024 election: Joe Biden.