But for Trump and Biden, 60 percent represents the Mount Everest of poll numbers. Stunningly, Trump never once in his presidency broke the 50 percent mark in the Gallup numbers—he would still go on to win more than 74 million votes, the second-highest total of any presidential candidate. Biden, at least, was running over or near 50 percent until the calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Let me be clear: Six months out, after two agonizingly close elections, I am not in the business of making predictions. That is too lucrative a sideline for everyone on cable TV panels—and it seems rude for me to try to horn in.
But what I think I do know is that there is limited value in desperately searching for signs and portents from prior elections, particularly those from the twentieth century. The list of factors that make 2024 sadly and frighteningly unique is lengthy: A felony trial in Manhattan, the comparative unpopularity of both Trump and Biden, the grim reality that whoever is elected will be in his eighties during his term in office, the increasingly deranged tenor of Trump’s threats about a second term based on retribution, the hangover from the worst pandemic in a century, and, of course, the aftereffects of a certain Trump-inspired insurrection.
