Abstract

We are just a year away from the 2024 US elections for president and Congress – elections that will have huge ramifications not just for the United States itself but for its allies and antagonists around the world. Most signs point to a rematch between former President Donald Trump and incumbent Joe Biden, despite both candidates’ unpopularity. Indeed, with apologies to Caddyshack II and Jaws: The Revenge, this may be the least-desired sequel of recent memory. So why is it imminent? And what is likely to happen when Americans go to the polls next November?

This talk will lay out the structure of US national elections and what we know – and don’t – about the campaign to come. How will Biden’s age (and for that matter Trump’s), and Trump’s (and for that matter Biden’s) alleged criminality, affect the electorate? How will events in the Middle East, Ukraine, and beyond shape the debate? And what would a second term look like for either man?

Andrew Rudalevige is Thomas Brackett Reed Professor of Government at Bowdoin College (Maine, USA ), a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an affiliate of the Center on US Politics at University College London. He is an expert on the US presidency and national politics and served as chair of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section. Recent publications include the award-winning By Executive Order, a new edition of The Politics of the Presidency textbook, and the forthcoming (if possibly premature) edited volume The Trump Legacy.