The low approval rating and various political headwinds for President Biden have invited comparisons with another first-term Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, and the challenges he faced running for re-election in 1980. Many Republicans are thinking about his defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan, bullish that Donald Trump also has what it takes to oust a flagging incumbent.
It is true that the 2024 race is shaping up to be a 1980 replay of sorts, but with an important twist. The more significant comparisons could be between Mr. Trump and Mr. Carter and their difficulty in winning over voters and, even more, between Mr. Biden and Mr. Reagan and their attempts to address doubts about their age — which are flaring again for Mr. Biden.
To be sure, Carter-Biden comparisons are real: Mr. Biden’s third-year job approval average was the lowest for a sitting president since Mr. Carter’s, and Americans were dissatisfied with the economy and with the direction of the country under both men.
But what became increasingly clear throughout 1980 was that there was a ceiling on voter support for Mr. Carter. The electorate had already decided it didn’t want to give him a second term. Mr. Carter’s job approval at the end of March was close to his final 41 percent share of the vote in November.
In this year’s race, it is Mr. Trump who closely resembles Mr. Carter in the most important ways, including his ceiling of political support.
For one, the most galvanizing and divisive figures in 1980 and today were Mr. Carter and Mr. Trump. As with Mr. Carter, most voters have firm opinions about Mr. Trump. His ability to inspire his base is matched only by his ability to alienate the rest of the electorate — as evidenced by the Republican Party taking beatings in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections.
In the end, Mr. Carter could not win enough people over and increase his share of the electorate. Mr. Trump faces the same challenge this year. By contrast, Mr. Reagan benefited from Reagan Democrats, and Mr. Biden has the potential to get some votes from anti-Trump Republicans. This is particularly true if Mr. Trump is convicted of felonies before the election.
Mr. Biden is no doubt counting on those vulnerabilities to hurt Mr. Trump. But Mr. Biden also needs to do more. One of the lessons from the 1980 presidential campaign is that dissatisfaction with one candidate isn’t enough to seal his fate if the opponent can’t meet voters’ threshold for acceptability. To get re-elected, Mr. Biden needs to clear the same threshold that Mr. Reagan did.
In 1980, voters held on to doubts about Mr. Reagan’s age and temperament through much of the race, but given their concerns about Mr. Carter, they continued to lower the bar on what they needed to see from Mr. Reagan to earn their support.
It was only after the debate between the two men on Oct. 28 that Mr. Reagan was finally able to convince the public that he was up to the job of president. According to Gallup, before the debate, Mr. Reagan was trailing Mr. Carter by eight points with registered voters and by three points with likely voters. Immediately after the debate, Mr. Reagan moved to a three-point lead with likely voters, and one week later he won a landslide victory over Mr. Carter.
It wasn’t so much that Mr. Reagan won the debate as that he did enough to reassure voters that he was up to the job as president. He needed to close the deal.
Mr. Biden has a similar task ahead of him. Like Mr. Reagan, the president must overcome deep doubts about his age and his ability to put the country back on track over the next four years. What’s more, despite having a different political base from Mr. Reagan’s, Mr. Biden has to appeal to the same swing groups that Mr. Reagan did in order to win in 1980: college-educated, independent, suburban and moderate voters. Mr. Biden won these groups in 2020 (narrowly among suburban voters, like Mr. Reagan’s narrow margin among moderate voters).
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