A look ahead at the elections of 2024
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Published 13 December 2023
Key findings
Donald Trump heads into the Republican primaries as the very strong favourite for the nomination. General presidential election polling of Biden against Trump shows a tighter race, with a small lead for Trump at the moment
Rishi Sunak appears unable to turn the Conservative Party’s dire polling around. Despite a number of major interventions on climate policy, small boats and immigration, the Conservatives continue to trail Labour by large margins in opinion polling.
The European right is gaining ground at the expense of the centre. Under current polling, the conservative ECR and far-right ID group would strengthen their position in Parliament while centre-left S&D and liberal RE would lose seats
The US Presidential election
Figure 1: National Republican primary polling averages over time
With the US presidential race coming up, primary season is almost upon us. This cycle, the Republican primaries are shaping up to be particularly interesting. Currently, in national polling as well as polling within Iowa, Donald Trump maintains a significant lead in the race for the party's nomination. Trump leads by over 30 points in the recent Des Moines Register poll, seen as the gold standard of polling within Iowa, of the GOP primary there. Moreover, his lead has only increased as his legal cases have emerged, showing how solid his grip is on the GOP base. This is Trump’s nomination to lose.
The Republican candidate field has narrowed by nearly half since the summer, with only five major candidates besides Trump still running. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who, since his announcement to run for President in late May, has experienced a substantial drop in his standing, remains in a distant second place nationally. The decline in DeSantis' backing has created an opening for other candidates vying for the second-place spot, with one notable contender emerging of late - Nikki Haley. There is also Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, and Asa Hutchinson still in the running although they all poll lower than even DeSantis and Haley. With a little over a month until the Iowa caucuses, and the election season overall commences, candidates are putting in their final push to perform well there.
Primaries aside, we are also seeing more and more research examining the key dynamics of the general Presidential Election in November 2024. Stack recently unveiled our inaugural set of MRP model estimates, offering a unique early perspective on the race. With a robust sample size of 15,205 registered voters, this comprehensive poll stands as the largest and sole MRP available at this point in the electoral cycle. The findings, extensively covered by POLITICO and The Hill in the U.S., as well as The Telegraph and The Independent in the U.K., reveal that if the election were held today, the mean MRP model estimates indicate that Donald Trump would beat Joe Biden with 292 to 246 electoral college votes, while Biden would win the popular vote as he did in 2020. Notably, Trump's resurgence is fueled by reclaiming pivotal swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – all of which flipped from Trump to Biden in the 2020 election.
On average, we find a swing towards Trump of 3.3 percentage points in the nationwide popular vote, reducing Biden’s lead from 4.5 percentage points in 2020 to just 1.2 percentage points in our current view of 2024, with Trump solidifying his lead in key states like Florida, North Carolina, and Texas. However, despite comparatively low approval ratings, Biden retains hope by holding onto swing states like Nevada and Michigan. The popular vote, however, sees a significant shift, with Trump narrowing Biden's lead from 4.5 to 1.2 percentage points from the last election. Biden is losing support relative to his 2020 performance among key demographic groups such as young voters, Hispanics, African Americans, and independent voters. While we are still a year out, rebuilding the coalition that won him the election in 2020 is not going to be easy for Biden.
2. The UK General Election
Time is running out for the Conservative Party to turn their fortunes around. For much of the past two years - trailing in the polls - Conservative hopes have rested on the idea that governments suffer from “mid-term blues” which unwind as the election approaches. However, with a little under a year until the last possible date of the next election, Labour continues to outperform previous opposition parties. Multiple interventions from the Prime Minister, on Net Zero, small boats and immigration, have failed to boost Conservative voting intention. Indeed, the party’s position has scarcely improved from the depths of Liz Truss’s premiership (see Figure 2).
In our polling average, Labour currently has a 17% lead - the biggest lead for an opposition at this stage in the electoral cycle for any election aside from 1997 (see Figure 3). In the past four elections where the opposition has had a lead of 10% or more at this point (1964, 1970, 1997 and 2010), that party has gone on to form a government. While British voters are volatile, and large swings in voting intention are not unheard of, it would be a historic achievement for the Government to overturn such a large opposition lead.
Figure 2: UK General Election polling averages over time
Figure 3: Current opposition polling lead compared to historical averages of opposition polling
The bleak picture for the Government is recorded in polling across the board, not only in nationwide voting intention. Rishi Sunak enjoyed a brief “honeymoon” period on ascension to Prime Minister, but has since seen his personal ratings fall in line with his party’s. Keir Starmer has a substantial lead in most polls of preferred Prime Minister. And on most issues - including all of those which voters rank as a top priority - the Labour Party has a substantial lead over the Conservatives.
Aside from the Labour-Conservative horse race, there are several other interesting dynamics. Despite underwhelming national poll numbers, the Liberal Democrats are hoping to convert by-election and local election victories into Westminster representation with highly targeted anti-Conservative campaigns. The SNP are expected to lose a significant number of seats to Labour, but the scale of losses is highly unpredictable. And finally, it is an open question whether Reform UK - currently polling around 8% - can turn polling into votes, as they have failed to do so far in local and by-elections.
3. The European Parliament election
Between 6 and 9 June, 2024, over 400 million European citizens will be eligible to vote in the next European Parliament elections. With the Parliament playing an increasingly important role in European decision-making, the results shape and constrain what the next European Commission can achieve. Moreover, the results of the election also affect the composition of the next Commission. The Commission President, for example, needs to be approved in an investiture vote by a parliamentary majority.
Forecasting the European Parliament election results has been a notoriously difficult challenge for pollsters around Europe. With voting in 27 different member states for more than 300 different parties, the cacophony of national dynamics affecting the race in different ways can be unpredictable to say the least. At Stack, we have been tracking the state of the race since April 2023, using a model that converts national parliamentary polling in each of the 27 countries into turnout-adjusted seat predictions for the European Parliament. Our predictions so far are visualised in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Monthly Stack seat projection trends per European Parliament group
What can these early predictions tell us about the state of the race? Two trends stand out. First, the political centre appears to be losing ground. While the EPP is currently predicted to expand their number of seats from 178 in the active parliament to 185 (+7), the other two parties that have been key to policy-making in this term, the centre-left S&D and the liberal Renew group, are set to lose seats. For the S&D, these losses are slight (-3) but Renew would lose a stunning 17 seats under current polling. This is likely to complicate policy-making on day-to-day matters for a EPP-S&D-RE coalition.
Secondly, the European right is gaining ground. Based on our latest projections, the conservative ECR group is up from 66 seats to 87 seats, mainly related to continued strong polling numbers for Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia in Italy. Furthermore, the far-right ID group currently polls at 87 seats as well, up 27 seats from their current 60 MEPs. Together, these two developments could pull the centre of gravity of European policy-making to the right, enabling a potential route to a parliamentary majority of EPP-ECR-ID. With the election just 6 months away, these are the key trends to watch in the final stretch.
We are also keeping an eye on:
Pakistani general election - Amid political polarisation and divided institutions, voters in Pakistan will head to the polls to elect a new National Assembly. Although jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan will not stand, it is currently unclear who will fill the void that he left in Pakistani politics. Voting on 8 February 2024.
Portuguese parliamentary election - Portugal is facing snap elections in March after former Prime Minister Costa’s government collapsed when Costa himself was implicated in an ongoing corruption probe. Under current polling, we may see far-right Chega play a kingmaker role in the coalition formation process after the election. Voting on 10 March 2024.