The State of the Union? US Midterms and the Race for 2024
| Author | Alex Waddan |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058231167262 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
16 POLITICAL INSIGHT • MARCH 2023
US political cycles are short.
No sooner were the tallies
in from last November’s
tumultuous midterm elections
than the focus had shifted to the 2024
presidential election. The Republicans
underperformed in the midterms, but
that did not stop former President Donald
Trump announcing that he will be standing
in 2024. As President Biden gave his
State of the Union address in February,
the expectation grew that he would run
for re-election. Biden has yet to make a
formal announcement, but polls suggest
most Americans, including a majority
of Democrats, doubt the wisdom of an
octogenarian president running again.
Before looking at the prospects for 2024,
however, it is important to reflect on what
happened in the 2022 midterms. These
simultaneously confounded the predictions
of much of the commentariat, gave greater
The State of the
Union? US Midterms
and the Race for 2024
Alex Waddan analyses November’s midterm election results and
looks at the prospects of Democrats and Republicans ahead of the
2024 presidential election.
institutional power to the Republicans
and re-framed the landscape for the 2024
campaign.
Understanding the midterms
Ahead of the midterms, there were
considerable grounds for pundits to
speculate that the Republicans would
enjoy being carried along by a ‘Red Wave’ in
a similar manner to the midterm elections
of 1994 and 2010 (see Table 1) when
first term Democrat presidents had seen
their party suffer what President Obama
dubbed a ‘shellacking’. In addition to the
traditional electoral backlash against the
incumbent party in midterm elections,
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Political Insight March 2023 BU.indd 16Political Insight March 2023 BU.indd 16 27/02/2023 13:5027/02/2023 13:50
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