• Biden and Trump secured their nominations for the 2024 presidential race.

• Neither of them faced significant competition in their respective parties for the nomination.

• Polling suggests that many US voters have long dreaded the head-to-head.

President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump have clinched their parties’ nominations for the 2024 presidential election — a rematch that long seemed both inevitable and largely disfavored by voters.

They both passed the delegate thresholds needed for the nomination on Tuesday night, following contests in Georgia, Mississippi, Washington, and Hawaii.

As of early Wednesday, Biden had passed the benchmark of 1,968 that Democrats require for him to win with 2,107 pledged delegates, per the Associated Press’ tracker. Meanwhile, Trump, needing 1,215 for the Republican Party’s nomination, had secured 1,241 bound delegates, per the AP.

Neither of them faced serious competition, with only Republican Nikki Haley — who dropped out of the race last week — gaining more than a handful of delegates, at 94, per the AP.

The result sets the US up for a replay of the contentious 2020 election, the results of which have long been falsely challenged by Trump. It will be the first rematch in a US presidential election for 70 years.

Trump acknowledged the primary result on Truth Social saying it is a “great honor” to represent the GOP, in a vitriolic post that called his opponent “crooked Joe Biden” and called the USA under his leadership a “Third World Country.”

“Let’s go,” Biden wrote on X, in a post that featured a video with a voiceover of him saying: “This is a time of choosing. So let us choose the truth.”

“Are you ready? Are you ready to defend democracy?” the voiceover continues.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll published in January indicated that a Biden-Trump rematch is one most American voters don’t want to see.

Story continues

According to the nationwide poll of 1,250 US adults, 70% of respondents, including half of the Democrats, said Biden shouldn’t seek reelection. But Trump also seems to be widely unpopular, with 56% of respondents saying he shouldn’t be seeking reelection, including a third of Republicans.

The age of the candidates is a key factor in explaining their unpopularity, according to the poll.

Biden, who is 81, is the oldest president in US history, while Trump, who is 77, would be the second oldest of he were to win office again.
The poll said that three-quarters of voters see Biden as too old for the job, including half of Democrats, and half of voters think Trump is too old, including a third of Republicans.

Both candidates also face a broader range of hurdles.

Trump is battling the fallout from his tumultuous first term, his alleged offenses in seeking to overturn his 2020 defeat to Biden, and his 91 criminal charges.

The 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade, which was backed by Trump, who appointed several of the justices behind the ruling, could also damage his reelection chances, particularly among female voters.

Biden, meanwhile, is facing mounting unpopularity over his migration policies and sharp divisions over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Crime is another sore point, and voters are at most uncertain over his handling of the economy.

Even the most committed Democrats and Republicans seem uninspired by the rematch, said Michael J. Boskin, professor of economics at Stanford University, for Project Syndicate.

“Trump also has a loyal, energetic base, whereas Biden’s re-election bid generates almost no enthusiasm, even among Democrats. Still, many Americans strongly oppose a second Trump term and more than 20% of those who voted in the Republican primaries say they won’t vote for Trump,” he said.

Read the original article on Business Insider