We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Canada's Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre speaks in the House of Commons.
Poilievre is polling well despite crying "terror"
The political exchange was sparked when a 56-year-old New York man set out to attend a Kiss concert, but instead ended up driving his Bentley at high speed into a barrier at the border crossing, going airborne and exploding on impact, killing him and his wife.
Fox News was quick to report that it was believed to be a terrorist attack, and Republicans were quick to link it to Biden’s border policies. On Twitter, Ted Cruz called it a terrorist attack, as did GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has called for a wall along the northern border.
In Canada’s House of Commons, before the facts were established, Poilievre asked about reports that the incident was linked to terrorism. After it became clear it had nothing to do with terrorists, the Liberals accused him of jumping to conclusions. When he was asked about it, Poilievre berated the reporter who posed the question, which commentators, including this writer, thought went too far. He also came under harsh criticism for voting against a Canada-Ukraine free trade deal and delivering a misleading explanation for the vote.
Both incidents gave Liberals the opportunity to attack him as dishonest, mean, and a Trumpy northerner, perhaps hoping for make a comeback in the polls. So far, that has not happened. The most recent poll from Nanos shows the Liberals so far behind that they are tied with the NDP, which could put pressure on the smaller party to force an early election. Seat projections show that the NDP would pick up seats if there was an election today, but that’s no guarantee since their voters might not like to see the NDP bring down Trudeau, opening a path to a Poilievre government.
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
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.
But over the weekend, some bad news came out for President Biden with a poll from The New York Times showing that Donald Trump was beating him in five of the most important swing states. So what does this mean for Biden? Well, the interesting thing here is that Democrats, in recent years, have done quite well with a highly engaged, high educated, high propensity voters, the kind of people who show up in off-cycle elections, in midterm elections, and special referendums and things like that. Republicans have done much better. And particularly Donald Trump has done much better with disaffected voters, voters who are less likely to show up, lower-income voters and lower-education voters. And that's why Trump has done so well in 2016, 2020 and could again do well in 2024.
The poll released over the weekend shows that Americans broadly think Biden's too old to be president in 2025 and that he polls quite poorly on the economy and foreign policy and a whole bunch of other issues with voters saying they would actually prefer a Republican candidate.
So what does this contradiction mean between the Democrats doing really well in the actual elections, yet Biden's poll numbers being relatively poor? It means that the 2024 election is probably going to be a pretty close, hard-fought battle. Biden's age is probably going to be a liability for him. And Donald Trump has an opportunity to pull the kind of inside straight in the Electoral College that he pulled again in 2016. All he has to do is flip three of the most important swing states probably Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona, are the three most important to watch. But a lot can change in a year. Biden's political fortunes could rise and fall. President Trump could end up being in jail. And we may end up with two other candidates. Who knows?
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
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.
Trump, on the other hand, at least if you've watched him recently and I've seen a couple of his rallies, is very physically robust, intellectually seems to be losing a lot more of the zip on his fastball. And I suspect that once he gets the nomination, which is virtually certain at this point, he's going to get a lot more real time coverage, more people are going to see that. So it plays definitely against Biden. But I don't think it's quite as dramatic a gap as we presently see.
Other issues out there I think are harder to address. Illegal immigration, for example, which is now not just about border red states, but it's about blue sanctuary cities that were happy being sanctuary cities when they have many illegal immigrants coming in. But you suddenly bring them in. They say, wait a second, we were fine with sanctuary city in theory, but in practice, this isn't going to work. And you see this happening in New York. You see it happening in San Francisco, in Chicago, in a bunch of cities around the country, and also hard to address because you had very limited immigration. While the pandemic was on, people weren't moving. Two and a half years of pent up demand. Now they are. And the willingness of Biden to play hardball, specifically with the Mexican government and the southern Mexican border, which is where the people are coming up through so far, has not been what it needs to be. Hard to imagine that issue gets much better.
The one that can get better for Biden is the economy, where increasingly the US economy is significantly outperforming those of other advanced industrial democracies post-Pandemic. And while inflation is high, it is coming down, though from a high base. And rates, no one expects they're going to continue to be raised by the Fed. In fact, indeed, they may well come down a little bit next year and that soft landing will likely help soften Biden's numbers on that side. Having said all of that, foreign policy is now becoming a vulnerability for Biden in a way that it really hasn't been over the last year or so. And few Americans actually vote on foreign policy. But when you talk about a huge issue, like 100 billion US dollars going to support Ukraine for a war that increasingly looks like a stalemate, where the counter offensive talked about for many months looks like a failure, and where it was a bipartisan issue of support for Ukraine, it's now become a partisan issue of Democrats strongly supporting more money for the Ukrainians. Republicans saying that's been too much money for the Ukrainians. And when Trump gets the nomination, the Republican Party presently voting more with the Dems likely to shift away from that support. And so I can easily see an environment where Ukraine feels like it's getting partitioned, which no one will accept and therefore is an unacceptable reality when Biden is running for reelection. That's been a signature foreign policy of his and he will be vulnerable to the Republicans.
The other issue, of course, is the Middle East. Now, if you can contain the Middle East war to Gaza and Israel, probably won't have much impact come next November. But if it expands, the impact on oil prices as well as the likelihood that US forces in the region are directly involved in some of the fighting with Iranian Shia proxies across the region, Yemen and Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and maybe even with Iran itself. That's a vulnerability too. Not to mention the fact that right now Biden's getting only just above 20% support from Arab American voters in the United States who are really important in places like Michigan, where they're 5% of the voting population, or Pennsylvania, where they're over 2%, both of which are larger than Biden's actual victory in those states back in 2020 elections.
So he has vulnerabilities there. And increasingly, the Biden administration is worried that, you know, this is going to be a challenge and there's not a lot of things they can do to ensure outcomes that are better. So in an environment where domestic policy looks okay, but people aren't focused as much on it, they're not as happy as they want to be on a couple of core issues. And suddenly foreign policy is a vulnerability, that to me feels challenging. Now against all of that, you have the fact that Biden is the president and incumbent presidents always historically do better in the United States, even unpopular ones. They get a bump because they can drive the agenda and they can drive the media coverage. That continues to be true for Biden. It's one of the strongest arguments for him to actually run a second time.
Beyond that, you've got the abortion issue, which continues to play strongly for Biden, very badly for Republicans. It was a conservative Supreme Court with key Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump that rid the country of Roe versus Wade, which ended up which was a quite popular decision by the Supreme Court for the majority of red and blue voters across the country. And there's a backlash that you see there. It's also one of the reasons why Kamala Harris is no longer seen as much of a drag on the Biden administration. In fact, in many ways, Biden is seen as much of a drag as Kamala is, especially in this last vote. And that's because she's been given not just immigration, which is a loser issue, but she's also been given abortion, which has been a winner issue. And as she's talked around the country, she's done better on that front.
Final point, of course, is Trump's unfitness. And while this is all played in 91 indictments, some of which are very real cases, some of which are politicized, but this is going to become a bigger turnoff for independent votes as people spend more time focusing not on Democrat versus Republican, but Biden versus Trump once the nominations happen. That's a vulnerability, too. So a long electoral cycle that no one wants to deal with, with two candidates that most people are very unexcited about. I guess we're going to have to talk about it more. But that's where we stand right now.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
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.
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.
Pence did not endorse any of his former rivals, but in what was seen as a dig at former President Donald Trump, he said “I urge all my fellow Republicans here, give our country a Republican standard-bearer that will, as Lincoln said, appeal to the better angels of our nature, and not only lead us to victory but lead our nation with civility."
Trump has since asked for Pence’s endorsement, noting that “I made him vice president.” But he also noted that “people in politics are very disloyal” – a swipe at Pence’s refusal in 2020 to disallow electoral votes that had elected Joe Biden.
The other thing Trump has his eye on is his former Veep’s possible testimony at his federal trial on charges he tried to steal the 2020 election from Biden during the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill.
While polls show that Trump remains far ahead of the competition for the GOP nomination, his legal woes appear to be his greatest obstacle: Trump is facing four legal proceedings, including one in Georgia on charges of “criminal conspiracy.” If reelected, he might be able to pardon himself of some charges, but not of state-level charges.Argentinian presidential candidate Javier Milei attends a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Oct. 11, 2023.
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.
And it’s precisely because of his libertarian – some would say anarchic – views and his open hatred for a political class that has failed to pull Argentina from a chronic economic crisis that his star is on the rise.
We know he’s a leading contender because Argentina has a political process that asks voters to indicate their preference for president two months before the election. In August, Milei won a jaw-dropping 30% plus of the vote in a race that included 22 candidates. The main center-right opposition bloc won 28%. The ruling leftist Peronist coalition took 27%.
The election will be held on Sunday, and with an inflation rate of 116% that keeps 40% of the country in poverty, it’s not hard to see why many voters might turn to a self-proclaimed political arsonist.
If this political dynamic sounds familiar, it’s because anti-politician politicians have become a phenomenon in recent years. Trump represented a complete break with the American political class, personified perfectly by Hillary Clinton. In 2018, exhausted by the scandals and stagnating economy under left-wing governments, Brazilian voters turned to profane former paratrooper Jair Bolsonaro.
But this isn’t just a right-wing phenomenon. French voters chose Emmanuel Macron in 2017 in part because he challenged both the center-right and center-left establishment parties that dominated France for decades. Like Macron, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador created his own political party and drove it to power in 2018 by challenging a political class perceived as hopelessly corrupt. On the left, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro represented a similar let’s-just-start-over approach to political problem-solving.
It should be noted, however, that Trump was impeached twice, indicted four times, lost his bid for reelection, and is now running again with a national approval rating of 40%. Bolsonaro lost his bid for reelection too, and he’s now banned from running for office for eight years. Macron and Petro have become deeply unpopular. Only López Obrador has managed to defy political gravity while governing as a political outsider.
Argentina’s voters will decide on Sunday just how serious they are about a Javier Milei presidency. The most recent polls say the vote might be close, but Milei remains the favorite.
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.
Despite all his legal issues, is Trump still the candidate-to-beat in the race for the GOP nomination?
Oh, absolutely. And, you know, you know that I mean, we're seeing only gains compared to all the other candidates. The real question is, can trump win the presidency? And at this point, you have to say, of course, it's plausible, in part because the Republicans are performing better in the views of the voters, the electorate on the economy. Certainly illegal immigration numbers on the back of pent up demand and nobody moving for a few years of pandemic are now at record levels again. And there's very little Biden can do before the election to stop it. And of course, he's seen as too old to run and that's not going to be less true in 14 months. Trump has his own litany of serious personal challenges, and the Democrats and a lot of independents hate him with a true passion. That certainly matters. The abortion issue certainly matters, and incumbency certainly matters. So right now, if you make me make a bet, I'd still bet that Biden is likely to win by a little, but it's real close. I have no confidence in that call.
Bed bugs in Paris. My God. Would you still attend the Summer Olympics?
I thought bed bugs were things you caught in a bed. Like in a bed that's not clean. We need to change the name, at least, because apparently people are getting bed bugs in movie theaters and on metros and all over these public places in Paris. So I think we can't call them bed bugs. The first I want Macron to give us a new, more patriotic name for this animal that apparently anybody can catch pretty much anywhere. And yeah, it wouldn't stop me from going to Paris Olympics, though I've got a lot of other stuff I need to do, but I'd probably be a little careful where I sit down, crowded places and things like that. I don't know. Can't do any. There’s not any cream you put on yourself to avoid bed bugs. Who the hell knows? I guess you're going to find out if you're going to Paris.
- Ian Explains: Trump's Republican competition ›
- Will Trump’s “sham” talk go unchecked? ›
- The country that wants to take on Haiti’s gangs ›
- What We’re Watching: UN mulls Haiti intervention, petrol workers join Iran protests, Biden tightens tech exports to China ›
- Why is Haiti such a disaster? ›
- What We’re Watching: Argentine VP’s legal woes, angry Haitians, Pakistan’s Qatari cash push, Trump’s DOJ suit ›