Barring some major unexpected change, President Biden will not face any major opposition for the nomination next year.  At the present time, his opposition is composed of fringe candiates who reject most of the Democratic platforms of the past thirty-five years.

On the Republican side, there is supposedly a nomination contest.  But in many ways, we are seeing a repeat of the 2016 campaign with Donald Trump starting from a stronger position than he did in 2015.  Back then, Trump was an unknown quantity as a politician and Republican voters were simply playing with the possibility of supporting Trump.  Now, he is a known and the “maybe” 25% is something like a 40% certain and a 30% maybe.  But the constant is that most of the top contenders are unwilling to attack Trump.

Part of the reason why Trump has emerged with only a handful willing to attack him is a general perception about negative campaigning.  The problem with negative campaigning is that it has a cost.  Negative campaigning is aimed at “persuadable” voters.  At best, it persuades the voter leaning to the opponent to vote for you (a gain of one vote for you and a loss of one vote for your opponent or a swing of two), but it is acceptable if it merely results in the voter deciding to sit the race out (a loss of one vote for your opponent).  People do not like negative campaigns and such campaigns drive up the negatives of both the candidate doing the attack and the candidate being attacked.  If successful, the negative campaign drives up the negatives of the candidate being attacked more than it does the candidate doing the attacking.  In the general, negative campaigning works because you tend to have two candidates with enough “certain” voters that even if all persuadable voters flipped to a third candidate that third candidate would still finish third. Continue Reading...