A Joe Biden-Donald Trump rematch has a lot of voters turned off, but America has had several rerun elections
While only two states — Iowa and New Hampshire — have registered their preferences for the 2024 presidential nominations, there is a heavy cloud of inevitability that our ultimate choice this year will be a rematch between President Joe Biden and his twice-impeached predecessor, former President Donald Trump.
Many voters find this prospect discouraging. There is a widespread desire for the chance to vote for someone younger or someone new.
On the Republican side, many candidates jumped into the race initially, but most of them were leery of criticizing Trump, for fear of alienating his MAGA followers. Florida Gov. Ron de Santis dropped out and endorsed Trump after finishing a distant second in the Iowa caucuses. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott seemingly humiliated himself as he bowed down to kiss the ring and endorse the man he had hoped to replace.
Nikki Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina and as our ambassador to the United Nations, remains in the race after her second-place finish in New Hampshire, but pundits give her virtually no chance of success, even in her home state, which votes next.
Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota is challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, but he has faced almost a complete blackout in the news media and managed to pull just 19% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, even though Biden’s name was not on the ballot, which meant that Biden supporters had to write his name in.
Some polls show Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a political gadfly who has made a name for himself attacking the science of vaccinations, polling in the double digits if the general election does indeed feature a Biden-Trump rematch. Other third party candidates, including Jill Stein and Cornel West, may pull a surprising vote in part because of discontent on the left and among Muslims over the Biden administration’s general support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
A lot can happen between now and November. For one thing, Trump has been indicted for 91 felonies in four different courts, and his legal woes are likely to intensify. Since Biden is 81 and Trump is 77, and both are under considerable pressure, there will continue to be speculation about their physical and mental health as the campaign continues to heat up.
But let's assume that our presidential election this year is in fact a rematch of the 2020 election, in which Biden defeated Trump by a margin of 81.2 million to 74.2 million in the popular vote, winning the Electoral College by a vote of 306 to 232.
America has actually faced a presidential election rematch on six prior occasions in our 248-year history. There were four rematch elections in the 19th century, each of which produced the opposite result from the prior election. In the 20th century, America endured two rematches, each of which produced the same result as before, and by a larger margin.
In the early days of the republic, nobody kept track of the popular vote. The electoral vote was all that mattered. Only white men who owned property were able to vote for president in any case.
In the 1796 election to choose a successor to George Washington, Federalist John Adams narrowly defeated his Democratic Republican rival, Thomas Jefferson, by a margin of 71 electors to 68. Four years later, in 1800, the two men faced off again, but this time Jefferson defeated Adams in the House of Representatives after the electoral vote ended in a tie.
The choice was not exactly the same as before, since there was a third substantial candidate, Aaron Burr. Both Jefferson and Burr belonged to the same party, and there were no primaries or convention to sort out the disharmony between them.
In the 1824 election, the national popular vote was recorded for the first time. It was a four-way race, and Andrew Jackson out-polled John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Crawford. Since no candidate received a majority in the Electoral College, the decision again went to the House of Representatives, where the popular vote runner-up, Adams, was declared the winner.
Four years later, with a much larger popular vote, Jackson easily defeated Adams in both the popular and electoral vote and proceeded to remake the federal government in his own image.
In 1836. Democrat Martin Van Buren (the “red fox of Kinderhook” and the sitting vice president) defeated his Whig rival William Henry Harrison by a comfortable margin. The country went into an economic slump during Van Buren’s presidency and four years later, Harrison ousted him from office by a narrow margin in the popular vote and by a landslide in the Electoral College. Harrison’s glory was short-lived, as he contracted a cold which turned to pneumonia during his long-winded inaugural address and died a few weeks later. Harrison’s vice president, John Tyler, served out his term.
Fast forward to 1888, and incumbent Democratic President Grover Cleveland, was unseated by his Republican rival, Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland actually enjoyed a narrow win in the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College.
Harrison, who sported the longest beard of any American president, saw the admission of no less than six new states during his one term, specifically Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and yes, good old South Dakota.
Apparently all that activity didn't help him at election time; in 1892 Cleveland won their rematch, winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Significantly, there was a third major candidate that year, Populist James Weaver.
Republican William McKinley defeated his Democratic rival, William Jennings Bryan (“the silver-tongued orator of the West”) in both 1896 and 1900, and was assassinated soon after winning his second term. He was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.
Finally, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, a national hero and winning general in World War II, defeated the same Democratic opponent, Adlai E. Stevenson, in both 1952 and 1956. While Eisenhower (seen above in a public domain image posted on wikimedia commons) expanded his landslide victory when he coasted to his second term, South Dakota bucked the trend.
Republican farm policies were not particularly popular here, and a young upstart named George McGovern had been hard at work revitalizing the Democratic Party and he was elected to Congress from the East River district in a time when we had two representatives. Eisenhower still carried this traditionally Republican state, but Stevenson made significant gains here.
Of course, it's too soon to say with certainty that this fall’s election will be a Biden-Trump rematch. The U.S. Supreme Court will have to decide whether the 14th Amendment prohibits Trump from seeking the presidency, since his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, imploring his supporters to go up to the Capitol and “fight like hell” (which they did) appeared to constitute an act of insurrection.
Presidents Adams, Van Buren, Harrison and Cleveland accepted their election losses with some grace. So did Vice President Al Gore, after the Supreme Court ordered the state of Florida to stop the recount that was then underway, which might have shown that he actually defeated George W. Bush in that pivotal state.
But the prospect of a presidential rematch, in and of itself, is not without precedent.
Jay Davis is a retired Rapid City attorney
