The term is often used, yet little understood.
Former President Trump could be arrested any day now on charges related to a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, and yet we nonetheless still find ourselves facing the real possibility of a Biden vs. Trump rematch in 2024. Some might say neither option seems very appealing, but the arguments for and against each candidate continue to return to one thing: their electability.
That familiar word, which describes who’s most well-positioned to win an election, comes into play long before a single vote is cast. This assessment has to be made a year in advance, thanks to the parties’ nomination process, and political scientist Seth Masket says this designation often relies on “gut instincts, which are heavily guided by stereotypes and myths.” But he adds this shouldn’t be confused with the age-old “who would you want to have a beer with?” metric: “The ‘electable’ candidate is not the candidate who we like,” Masket explains.
So where do Trump and Biden fall on this rather vague-sounding spectrum? One could argue that they’ve already proven their electability, given that they’ve both won a presidential contest, but their parties have each suffered losses under their leadership and there are different stakes this time around.
The belief that Biden was the most electable candidate is what propelled him to victory in the Democratic primary two years ago. But even though he currently leads with 34 percent support over his possible Democratic rivals, a majority of those in the party don’t want him to seek a second term, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. Trump’s prospects are spotty, too: Despite being head and shoulders above the rest of the 2024 primary field with 43.9 percent support, the party’s elites are already trying to stop him from running away with the GOP nomination once again. (Trump’s closest competitor in that survey, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is currently polling at 29 percent.)
And, of course, there’s the elephant in the room: Trump has found himself at the center of multiple criminal investigations. Aside from the hush-money payments, the Justice Department thinks the ex-president misled his own lawyers and “intentionally concealed” his knowledge of a trove of classified records that were found at his Mar-a-Lago estate. And yet, even considering all that legal peril, some pundits are still arguing that an arrest could actually help Trump in 2024.
But could the way each party prioritizes finding a nominee be shifting? Here’s a breakdown of why it matters, how it has evolved, and how it has even been taken advantage of to keep out more diverse political candidates.
Does electability matter?
The whole concept seems like a bit of a stretch. After all, it’s impossible to know whether a political candidate is electable until they’ve actually been elected, though that hasn’t stopped pundits and candidates from speculating on it ad nauseam.
Veteran journalist John Ellis, in particular, has been wrestling with this question a lot lately, but he ultimately finds the argument of “electability” an unconvincing one for voters because it implies that they must vote for a certain candidate.
“The problem with electability is that it leads to a should,” says Ellis, who is the editor of the daily newsletter, News Items. “And voters, especially Trump voters, don’t like being told what they should support.”
To complicate our understanding of the term even more, Trump completely upended the meaning of electability in 2016, when he pulled off a shocking upset over Hillary Clinton, who was seen as the more experienced (and, therefore, more electable) candidate. In more recent years, the GOP’s embattled kingmaker has continued to muddy the waters by insisting that he never actually lost to Biden in the 2020 election and dodging countless legal investigations without ever facing criminal charges (so far, at least).
This, in turn, has made it difficult for fellow Republicans trying to push him out of the running for the 2024 nomination. According to The New York Times, surveys have shown that roughly 70 to 80 percent of Republicans still don’t believe Trump lost the 2020 election in the first place, echoing the former president’s disproven claims of fraud — which have been parroted extensively by anchors on Fox News.
“Trump has completely remade the Republican Party,” Ellis tells Katie Couric Media. “The question now is who is going to lead the Trump party.”
Party priorities
While both parties have traditionally put a premium on electability, Democrats have tended to fixate on the concept in recent years — especially in the last election cycle. In fact, the belief that Biden could beat Trump was the key reason why the former vice president advanced to the general election. At the same time, this sort of pragmatism when choosing a candidate isn’t what the party is traditionally known for — as the popular saying goes, “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.” But Masket argues that this formula has started to reverse in recent years.
“Democrats have been having really competitive primaries, but then the rest of the party just sort of falls in line behind who they pick and they don’t fight a lot about it afterward,” he tells us. “But the Republicans have these very heated contests, and they don’t all necessarily fall in line.”
It’s true: Most Republicans nowadays care more about picking a nominee who agrees with them on major issues, like immigration and the economy, than a candidate who has a better chance of beating Biden in the 2024 election, according to a new CNN poll of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents conducted by SSRS. But there’s still room for that adage about falling in line to win out: What’s also noteworthy about this poll is that a sizable chunk of respondents — 71 percent — are much more open to changing their minds as to who they would support.
Used and abused?
Some experts say the concept of electability has been used as a code word for discrimination against minority candidates. Political scientist Stephen Nuno-Perez points to former President Barack Obama as a prime example of how the term has been weaponized.
“During his first candidacy, a lot of people were saying that he was unelectable because he was a Black man, and yet he was able to mobilize a lot of new voters,” says Nuno-Perez. “But that just underscores how much of a moving target this idea of electability is.”
As Obama proved in 2008 and in 2012, people of color absolutely can win at the ballot box — and the data backs that up. After all, Congress has progressively gotten more racially and ethnically diverse over the last several years. The latest 118th session boasts a record: 133 lawmakers who identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian American, American Indian, or Alaska Native, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Congressional Research Service.
As for women candidates, the data is just as promising: Numerous studies have shown that women are actually just as likely to win an election as men (though they’re also less likely to run).
That said, these findings don’t mean there aren’t penalties when it comes to gender and race: Experts say it can be difficult to quantify whether these factors cost votes because people are unlikely to admit sexism or racism in polls.
The “electability trap”
Yet, even though these biased assumptions have been disproven time and time again, they nevertheless run the risk of what’s known as an “electability trap.” This is the idea that voters won’t support a certain candidate — even if it’s their preferred choice — if they think other Americans won’t support them, too. Unfortunately, this can result in a self-fulfilling prophecy — the very belief that someone can’t win based on their gender or ethnicity has the power to make it true.
“Like many things, one way to counter this is education — women can win elections, as can people of color,” says Nuno-Perez. “If voters think these folks can win, they are more likely to support them.”
All that to say: Electability absolutely plays a role in our assessment of which candidates to support, even in some ways we don’t even realize, so it’s important to be aware of some of the larger biases at play. As Nuno-Perez points out, bestowing the crown of being “electable” doesn’t happen in a vacuum — but the effects can create a tidal wave that candidate rides all the way to the White House.
