Two Incumbents
A Biden-Trump rematch would alter how people typically think about incumbent re-election campaigns
In 1892, former President Grover Cleveland defeated incumbent President Benjamin Harrison by three percentage points to reclaim an office he had lost to his opponent four years earlier.
In an era of close high-turnout elections, the Cleveland-Harrison rematch turned on small margins in a few states. Cleveland had been booted from office in 1888 despite winning the popular vote, albeit by a 0.8% margin. He had been elected initially in 1884 by 0.5% after squeaking out a win in his home state of New York by 1,149 votes.
If Republicans nominate Donald Trump next year, the 2024 election will be the first since 1892 in which a president and a former president face off against each other as major party nominees.
This would alter the way voters typically think about an election with an incumbent on the ballot.
You’ve probably heard me say elections always come down to choices between candidates, where voters evaluate their options and make a decision between two visions of a promised future.
In an open seat election like 2016, where neither candidate has a presidential record to run on, voters will try to make the best decision they can based on how they perceive the candidates.
Persuasion can play a big role in these match-ups because both options require a certain leap of faith. Each candidate will try to convince the electorate they are up to the job and their opponent is not. Voters will sort through these claims and make a choice without the benefit of a track record to guide them.
In an election where an incumbent is on the ballot, voters don’t need to exercise their imaginations quite as much. They will already have an opinion of the incumbent’s performance and need to decide whether to sign up for four more years or take a chance with an unknown quantity.
When an incumbent is popular, like Ronald Reagan in 1984, the challenger has an enormous task. How do you get people to abandon the status quo when they’re content with how things are going?
But even when an incumbent is unpopular, challengers need to overcome intrinsic concerns about shaking things up. Weak incumbents will play to this and urge voters to stick with “the devil they know” while raising doubts about their untested opponent.
In 1980, a vulnerable Jimmy Carter warned of a dangerous, uncertain future if the country were placed in Ronald Reagan’s hands, playing on his opponent’s reputation (quite widespread at the time) as a warmongering, intemperate, out-of-the-mainstream radical. The election was close until the very end, when Reagan reframed the choice by asking voters to think about whether they were better off before Carter became president, presenting his pitch in a calm, nonthreatening way.
It was the classic argument of the untested challenger inviting the electorate to overcome inertia and take that leap of faith.
If Republicans nominate Donald Trump next year, the 2024 election will be the first since 1892 in which a president and a former president face off against each other as major party nominees. This would alter the way voters typically think about an election with an incumbent on the ballot.
But what about an election with two candidates who’ve both held the job?
This is a different type of decision entirely, because voters are fully versed on the presidential styles of both candidates. They know what a Biden presidency is like. They know what a Trump presidency was like.
In this match-up, there are essentially two incumbents. The one in office now will benefit from the inertial forces that traditionally give incumbents some measurable advantage, but his opponent won’t need to ask voters to imagine what his term in office will be like because they already know.
This can cut both ways for the challenger.
He will start the election with an unwavering base of support. Those seeking a return to the past will rally to him. In 2024, this will include voters who live in the MAGA “fake reality” bubble and view the election as retribution for having had 2020 stolen from them. No amount of convincing will be necessary to mobilize these voters.
This is what makes Trump a viable candidate even as he defends himself against 91 felony counts, and what strikes fear in the hearts of those who understand what a second Trump administration would mean.
But there are not enough of these voters to win an election. That’s where Trump’s challenge begins.
He will need to make a case to voters outside his base to return him to the White House when they know what that will look like. Unlike in 2016, he can’t ask people to take a chance on an unknown quantity. He has to explicitly ask them to return to a past they may remember as chaotic and dark.
And if they don’t remember it that way, Joe Biden is prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars reminding them.
This puts Biden in a stronger position than other incumbents who have struggled to win widespread support of their performance in office.
Because elections with incumbents are always to some degree retrospective decisions, having a challenger with a record in office allows Biden to ask voters to assess his own presidency in the context of his opponent’s presidency. It allows him to remind voters why they once supported him over his challenger, and why the reasons to do it again still matter four years later.
He can bolster that argument by educating voters about his record—and in this case, Biden has an accomplished record to run on. But he can draw the most beneficial contrasts with Trump by reminding voters to look backwards four years to a known past before asking voters to consider which incumbent is going to deliver a brighter future.
Trump will play into this strategy by looking exclusively at the past while asking for vindication. His campaign is entirely backwards-looking, a vehicle for re-litigating 2020. He is asking voters to return to a place they already left once, and he is asking them to do it so he can settle scores.
That’s not exactly the kind of upbeat, forward-looking message that wins national elections.
Like you, I’m too young to remember how Grover Cleveland ran against Benjamin Harrison. But remember that unlike Trump, it was Cleveland who was denied the presidency because of a quirk of the Electoral College. In his three campaigns, Cleveland won a plurality of the popular vote each time. Donald Trump never came close to doing that.
Every day for the next year, Joe Biden will remind the public why.