Ian Explains: Will foreign policy decide the 2024 US election?

How much does foreign policy matter in a US presidential election? This year, more than usual.

When pollsters started asking Americans in 1948 what they viewed as the “most important problem” facing the country, foreign policy and international security dominated.

Looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election, Biden has managed to turn a Covid-ravaged economy around, with growth pegged at about three percent per quarter. Wages are going up, unemployment is at an all-time low and the stock market is coming on strongly. By every economic indicator, Biden should be surging. And yet, by every political indicator, he’s floundering.

Biden’s fate in November may hinge on whether he can convince a skeptical electorate that the economy is doing as well as it is...actually doing. But Americans’ views on the Ukraine war have shifted, with a plurality now saying the US is doing too much to help Ukraine. And half of US adults polled in February said that Israel has gone too far on its war with Gaza. Could Biden’s handling of these key foreign policy issues cost him the election in November?

It’s already clear that foreign policy will play an outsize role in this year’s election. So will immigration, which topped Gallup’s “most important problem” list in February and which is both a foreign policy issue and an economic one.

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