The Republican primary race is not officially over but with no obvious pathway to victory for Nikki Haley, a general election showdown between two adversaries is coming into view.

We are months away from the Democratic and Republican conventions, the moment when each party officially unveils its presidential nominee.

But the 2024 election seems all but set in stone.

The contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be unique in modern history as a rematch between the current president and his immediate predecessor.

"Having two presidents running changes the nature of the race," says Todd Belt, a politics professor at George Washington University.

"This is a comparison, not just a referendum on the incumbent. There are no blank slates going into this election."

The contrast will be simple, according to Sean Spicer, who served as Mr Trump's first press secretary and worked for the Republican National Committee prior to that.

"For those people who say, well, during Trump, the policies of Donald Trump made my life better, more secure, made the economy and our communities better, it's a no brainer."

The Trump campaign has every motivation to go on the attack against Mr Biden, in part to distract from his own weaknesses - including his legal troubles, his divisive rhetoric and his attempts to undermine the 2020 election results, which contributed to the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

But Mr Biden also has key vulnerabilities, struggling to sell his first-term achievements and trying to convince the public he has the energy for the campaign and a second term.

Already in this presidential race he is painting his predecessor as out-of-control and a threat to America, and to democracy itself.

"Usually, that's what you do when you're running against somebody who's unknown in politics," says Susan Estrich, a Democratic author and analyst who managed Michael Dukakis' presidential campaign in 1988.

"But here, you've got somebody who's very well known, and you're just trying to prove he's a big risk."

It's a rematch few Americans say they want - a bare-knuckle, nasty slog of a campaign - but it's a presidential choice that at this point they seem almost certain to get.

Close race on a small map

Mr Biden's approval ratings continue to languish in dangerous territory for an incumbent entering an election year. Public perceptions of Mr Trump are also negative, however.

By all indications, November's general election is going to be tight. National polls show the two candidates either neck and neck or Mr Trump with a slight advantage.

But this early in the race they are of limited usefulness, given the nature of the US political map. While Americans will head to the polls across the nation, this race will once again be decided in only a handful of states.

That's because the electoral college, the system the US has to pick its president, depends on candidates winning each state and most states are solidly Democratic or Republican.

The most crucial states that could go either way this year include Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan in the so-called Rust Belt, and Arizona and Georgia, two states that Mr Biden flipped Democratic in 2020.

Nevada is also considered a toss-up but its small population makes it a less valuable prize.

A few states that have been battlegrounds in previous election cycles have slipped off this map - Florida and North Carolina have trended Republican of late, while Virginia and Colorado appear to be more solidly Democratic.

So while national polls provide fodder for political commentators, a much smaller subset of voters will ultimately be the ones who matter.

Polling in November that showed Mr Trump inching ahead in these key states caused alarm among some Democrats, but polls a year from the election are not necessarily accurate predictors of the outcome.

The economy (again)

When it comes down to it, Americans tend to vote from their wallets in national elections - for the governing party in good times and the opposition in bad.

"It's the economy, stupid" was the mantra of Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign, and the refrain has become political gospel in the decades since.

One of the factors that makes 2024 challenging to predict is that, on the whole, economic indicators are positive.

Source:
courtesy of BBC NEWS

by Anthony Zurcher | North America correspondent

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