Column: Trump running in 2024 is a dream come true for Democrats. He’s the weakest candidate out there, but also the one with the most delegates. His reelection prospects are pretty grim.
In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump was the least popular candidate to run for president in American history. He was more unpopular than either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. With nearly 80 percent of the electorate undecided or refusing to support his candidacy, it seemed that voters were more inclined to vote for the least popular candidate of all time.
When Trump ran for president in 2016, he was so far behind in the polls that it seemed like he was running for one of the low-profile offices like mayor of Scranton or governor of Washington state. The 2016 race felt like it was shaping up as a real race, with the polls getting more settled and the field of candidates getting more defined by early campaign speeches and endorsements. The race was a contest among two titans—Trump versus Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders versus Donald Trump.
Despite his unpopularity in the polls, in the end, Trump ended up winning the election by approximately 10 percentage points.
The 2016 election is the only general election in American history where the least popular candidate (Trump) won the presidency.
This election cycle, as we get closer to the 2020 election, it’s looking like things are going to be much different. We’re in an environment where it seems like the most popular candidates are going to run, and the least popular candidates are going to lose.
Right now, the polls are pretty even. The average of polls put Ted Cruz at 15 percent, followed by Trump at 14 percent, followed by Sanders at 13 percent, followed by Beto O’Rourke at 8 percent, followed by Amy Klobuchar at 5 percent, and then the candidate we all thought would be left off the ballot, Kamala Harris, at 2 percent.
If Trump does go down, the most likely candidates to replace him are John Kasich at 7 percent, and then Warren and Sanders at 5 percent, followed by Beto in 3 percent, followed by Harris at 1 percent, followed by Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, at 1 percent, and then Mike Bloomberg with 0 percent.
As we