State of the World with Ian Bremmer
WATCH
Scroll to the top

{{ subpage.title }}

Canada's Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre speaks in the House of Commons.

REUTERS/Blair Gable

Poilievre is polling well despite crying "terror"

Canadian Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre jumped the gun last week, joining US Republicans in suggesting that terrorism was behind what turned out to be a tragic car accident at the Niagara Falls International Rainbow Bridge, giving Liberals a chance to bash him as a northern Republican.
Read moreShow less
What Democrats and Republicans have in common this Thanksgiving
What Democrats and Republicans have in common this Thanksgiving | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

What Democrats and Republicans have in common this Thanksgiving

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.

What are three things that lawmakers have to be grateful for this Thanksgiving?

Well, the first is that they get to go home. Lawmakers reached a short-term deal to fund the government until January 19th, which means that they won't be around Washington, DC, beating each other up over levels of funding. That can all wait until 2024. They can go home and enjoy the holidays with their families and not pass much other legislation this year.

The second is that so far, the Inflation Reduction Act seems to be working to spur manufacturing in the United States. There are 22 new battery plants currently under construction. There's record investment in electronics manufacturing, and a number of European companies have announced their intention to expand green energy projects in the United States and not because of these subsidies. Now, of course, the real question about the success of the program is going to come when the subsidies stop, and you can judge how well the US has done in spurring this manufacturing in the US. But for now, Democrats are happy because it looks like the IRA is working. Republicans like the jobs, even though they didn't vote for the bill.

The third thing that both parties have to be grateful for is that there are no competitive primaries, which means that there's no choosing sides. There's no traipsing through the snowy fields of Iowa to campaign for one guy or another. Donald Trump is almost certain to win the Republican nomination, and Joe Biden faces no real challengers. So, both parties can marshal all their resources for the general election in 2024. And neither party is likely to go through a particularly divisive primary in the first half of the year.

Biden's 2024 prospects slip even as Democrats make gains
Biden's 2024 prospects slip even as Democrats make gains | US Politics In: 60 | GZERO Media

Biden's 2024 prospects slip even as Democrats make gains

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.

How are President Biden's electoral prospects looking?

A year out from the 2024 presidential elections, numerous states throughout the US held elections this week, and Democrats had a pretty good night. A constitutional amendment protecting access to abortion passed in Ohio, and Democrats won the two chambers of the Virginia legislature, a rebuke to Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, who won an unexpected election there just 12 months ago.

Read moreShow less
Jess Frampton

Where does the US presidential election stand one year out?

A year out, the 2024 election looks like a coin flip.

National polling averages from 538 and RealClearPolitics currently have President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump – the two major parties’ presumptive nominees – in a statistical dead heat. Because of the Electoral College, though, the outcome of US elections is determined not by the national popular vote but by the states – and, increasingly, by a very small number of voters in a handful of swing states. Trump carried most of these in 2016, and Biden flipped most of them in 2020. The former was decided by about 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; the latter, by about 44,000 voters in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia.

The 2024 election is likely to be just as close. Polls consistently show that most Americans dislike both Biden and Trump and would rather not have to choose between them. That both candidates will have a narrow path to victory is guaranteed. The only surprise at this point would be a landslide for either.

Momentum is against Biden

Trump is still just as unpopular as he was in 2020 (if not a bit more), but Biden is significantly weaker than he was then. The president’s approval rating and performance in head-to-head polling against Trump are trending in the wrong direction, driven by growing concerns about Biden’s age and brewing discontent about the direction of the country under his watch.

A New York Times/Siena College poll of registered voters in battleground states released over the weekend found that Biden trails behind Trump in five of the six closest states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada). This is largely driven by a massive – almost implausible – erosion in Biden’s support among young and nonwhite voters, who were core components of the coalition that put him in the White House. While this result (and all individual polls) should be taken with a grain of salt given normal polling errors and the very small samples of less politically engaged minority groups surveyed in each state, Biden’s growing weakness with these demographics – which make up a growing share of the electorate – has been confirmed time and again in multiple surveys.

Interestingly, the poll also shows that Biden the candidate is substantially less popular than Democrats in general. An unnamed, generic Democrat leads Trump by eight points in swing states, whereas Biden trails by five. Meanwhile, the deeply unpopular Vice President Kamala Harris outperforms Biden in horse-race matchups against Trump by two points (!). Democrats’ strong performance in Tuesday night’s off-year, state-level elections seems to confirm that their biggest problem is having Biden at the top of the ticket.

The NYT/Siena poll does suffer from a key flaw in that it did not poll either of the two potential spoiler candidates, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, by name. With both major parties’ candidates deeply unpopular, 2024 will be the most favorable environment for third-party candidates in a generation. Kennedy is currently polling in the teens; West pulls in mid-single digits. While the far-left West will likely siphon off a few Biden supporters, particularly in the wake of the Israel conflict, polling so far suggests that Kennedy will draw significantly more from Trump’s voter base than from Biden’s – and at a larger scale. This could shift margins in closely contested swing states in Biden’s favor.

The election is also a full year away; much can (and will) change between now and then. That’s why early polls have tended to be not very informative, even if they have gotten a bit more predictive in recent, more polarized times. Voters aren’t giving much thought to the election this far in advance, when the general campaign hasn’t even gotten underway. At this point in 2011, President Barack Obama faced a similar polling gap to Biden’s, and he went on to win reelection a year later.

Still, even if the poll overstates the extent of Biden’s troubles, this is all pretty bad news for the president.

Trump’s unpopularity is Biden’s saving grace

Despite his low approval ratings and current polling headwinds, Biden still retains a slight edge over Trump. For starters, Biden is the incumbent president; even weak incumbents like him benefit from being able to drive the national agenda and shape media coverage to their advantage. Moreover, Biden already beat Trump once – and that was before he incited the Jan. 6 insurrection and the conservative Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which made democracy and abortion winning issues for Democrats. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Trump is a uniquely unfit candidate who will assuredly take the spotlight from Biden over the next year. Let me explain why that will help the president.

Recently, Biden has been driving the news far more than Trump has, and not for good reasons. Although from personal experience I can tell you that mentally he’s still pretty solidly there, Americans (and even Democrats) nearly universally believe Biden is too old for a second term. Although the economy is doing well (yes, really) and most voters report feeling positively about their own financial situation, Americans’ perceptions of the US economy as a whole are extremely negative. And although few Americans actually vote on foreign policy, it has gone from a major strength to a weakness for the president on account of a stalemated and divisive war in Ukraine and an expanding war in the Middle East. These are vulnerabilities the president can do little to nothing about.

If Biden were running against almost any challenger other than Trump, the election would be a referendum on him and his first term. With the current environment as bad as it is, the president would be a significant underdog. Yet Trump’s unrivaled baggage, deep unpopularity with independent voters, and pathological compulsion to make himself the center of attention is Biden’s saving grace. As the campaign gets underway, Trump’s legal troubles, refusal to shy away from his unpopular efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and his own age-related mental decline (underrated in my opinion) will weigh on the former president and make Biden look comparatively better.

Indeed, if there’s a silver lining for Biden in the New York Times/Siena poll, it’s that the young and nonwhite voters who have soured on him since 2020 nonetheless dislike Trump and seem to be fairly open to Democrats other than Biden, maybe even more than they were in 2020. If Biden can win back those traditionally Democratic-leaning voters by reminding them of just how much they dislike Trump, he’ll go a long way toward recreating the coalition that elected him in 2020.

That said, it is far from guaranteed that Biden will be able to pull this off. And it’s not entirely (or even mostly) up to him. An economic slowdown in 2024, further age-related decline for Biden, deeper fractures over Israel among Democrats, or early mistrials or acquittals for Trump would reduce Biden’s slim advantage. Conversely, a soft landing of the US economy (aka no recession), clearer signs of age-related decline for Trump, more abortion overreach from Republicans, or an early criminal conviction in one of Trump’s several trials would tip the scales further in the president’s favor.

_________

🔔 Be sure to subscribe to GZERO Daily to get the world's best global politics newsletter every day on top of my weekly email. Did I mention it's free?

Biden's 2024 election vulnerabilities and strengths
Biden's 2024 election vulnerabilities | Quick Take | GZERO Media

Biden's 2024 election vulnerabilities and strengths

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take to kick off your week on a Monday here in New York City. And yeah, everyone, everyone talking about those polls, New York Times and Siena showing that Biden is behind Trump, not just in overall popularity, but also specifically in how voters in key swing states will vote. And, of course, that's the Electoral College. That's how you actually get elected president of United States. So, yeah, Biden supporters very concerned about that. But we are a year away, so it is early.

Having said that, a few things that I think are worth paying attention to. Number one, 71% of Americans say Biden, 80-year-old Biden is too old to run for president. Look, very few people actually work regularly with an 80-year-old. So I get it. And in a year's time, I'm fairly confident he's going to be a year older. So this is not something that Biden can do much of anything about. And there is material downside. Having said that, Biden is more obviously aging physically where intellectually, you know, one one-on-one in small meetings, he's still actually able to hold down meetings reasonably well.

Read moreShow less

Former Vice President Mike Pence announces he is dropping out of the race for president of the United States at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Saturday.

Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via Reuters

Pence's withdrawal leaves Trump with one less obstacle

On Saturday, former US Vice President Mike Pence dropped out of the presidential race for the GOP nomination, saying that "this is not my time.”

After six months of campaigning, Pence had failed to galvanize a large enough base of support and donations. Bowing out erased the funding needs but it also may have spared Pence the embarrassment of potentially failing to qualify for the third Republican primary debate on Nov. 8. As of Friday, four candidates had qualified: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Read moreShow less

Argentinian presidential candidate Javier Milei attends a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Oct. 11, 2023.

REUTERS/Agustín Marcarian

Who the heck is Javier Milei?

Perhaps you’ve heard about Argentina’s new presidential frontrunner. His name is Javier Milei, and his raucous political rallies feature him as a ranting, raving, rock star who wants to “blow up” the country’s political lethargy.

His charisma approaches the level of Donald Trump, a leader he says he admires. He wants to make the US dollar Argentina’s legal currency, close down the country’s central bank, and legalize the sale of human organs without government interference. He has argued that sex education in Argentina’s schools is part of an elite plot to destroy the traditional family.

Milei’s campaign style suggests he’s usually the last to leave the karaoke bar.

Read moreShow less
Haiti unrest: Will the UN's troop deployment help restore peace?
Haiti unrest: Will the UN's deployment of troops help restore peace? | World In: 60 | GZERO Media

Haiti unrest: Will the UN's troop deployment help restore peace?

Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.

Will the UN's deployment of troops to Haiti help bring peace to the country?

It certainly won't hurt, you know, a thousand Kenyan troops being deployed, as well as lots support for training of police and militias. There's been no government in Haiti. It's been taken over by gangs, massive amounts of violence and vigilantism in response. They need help. The UN's history in Haiti has been absolutely checkered and problematic. And so there are a lot of people that are concerned about this. But on balance, I'm really glad that finally someone is getting something done better. Frankly, if the US and Canada had played at least some role in this, given that their/our backyard.

Read moreShow less

Subscribe to our free newsletter, GZERO Daily

Latest