The Trump-Biden Race Is Underway

The long primary election season is underway today in the U.S. The Republican Party is holding caucuses in Iowa, where around 80% plan to vote for Donald Trump*. On Tuesday, Jan. 23, the Democratic Party will press the start button for its primary election in New Hampshire, with Joe Biden as the sure winner**. And on the calendar, both parties have underlined in red March 5, Super Tuesday, when primaries will be held in 10 states, including California and Texas. These two are key states for harvesting votes on a day that will undoubtedly pave the way to the nomination for the two front-runners, where they will test their strength for the second time Nov. 5.

Never before have primary elections been less necessary since a system was established in 1972, in which the popular vote governs rather than the leadership strategies of the two major parties, making it possible to know in advance who the nominees will be. Because there are no candidates in either the Democratic or the Republican ranks who can disturb Trump and Biden’s race to the White House, they are running a race without opposition.

The first debate between Trump’s likely opponents, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, showed the weakness of both. Florida Gov. DeSantis’ culture war did not break conservative voters' many diverse bonds with Trump. And the rhetoric of Haley, formerly Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, failed to distance her in any essential way from her old boss. Beyond that, it is significant that neither of the two dared to call into question the commitment to democracy of their likely opponent, who stirred up the assault on Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, and who has more than 90 criminal charges pending in various jurisdictions. They’re opposing Trump, but they’re not fighting him.

There’s not much difference in the situation in the Democratic field: the party has lacked the determination to nominate anyone other than an octogenarian candidate, a politician who is proven and capable of mobilizing, to the extent necessary, three important groups of voters: women; minority voters, especially African Americans; and young voters. There have not been many instances of a sitting president being denied the opportunity to run for reelection. Neither have there been many cases in which a president sought a second term at such an advanced age and with an approval rating of 40%, probably because of the mood of progressive voters, who feel let down by Biden, and of the state of the economy.

Biden’s approval rating is comparable to Trump’s in 2020, when he was in the last year of his term, but the then-president is credited with an ability to retain his voters that doesn’t seem to be there for his successor. Even so, Trump’s energy for moving voters was insufficient to win the victory, and he had to be satisfied with being the losing candidate with the most votes in history. This was due to the swing states that came down on the Democratic side, which are pretty much the same ones that will be in play in November. And that’s where the doubts multiply around Biden’s ability to motivate voters. This is an unknown that the primaries will not clear up, which could be predicted even before the campaigns started.


*Editor's Note: Donald Trump won 51% of the vote in the 2024 Iowa caucuses.

**Editor's Note: The Democratic Party has moved its first primary to South Carolina, but since New Hampshire state law mandates that it holds the first primary, Joe Biden is not on the ballot in New Hampshire. However, he can be written in at the bottom of the ballot.

***Editor's Note: Ron DeSantis announced Sunday, Jan. 21, that he was dropping out of the race for the GOP nomination and endorsed Donald Trump.