Although two years away, the 2024 presidential election is on the minds of many voters as they consider who will be the Republican nominee.
Former Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who served as speaker of the House from 2015 to 2019, is skeptical that his party can win if former President Donald Trump is the nominee again.
“It will be remarkable in 2024 that because we want to win and defeat the Democrats, we know as a party that we are better off with someone else to be our nominee to guarantee a victory because we know that we lose with Trump, “Ryan. said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “It’s the suburban voter. They’re the big difference.”
According to the Brookings Institution, large suburban areas in the 2020 election “registered a net Democratic advantage” for the first time since Barack Obama’s victory in 2008. In 2016, Trump won suburban counties by about 1.2 million votes, but in 2020, President Biden won by 613,000 votes.
In Wisconsin, Ryan’s home state, a majority of voters chose Biden over Trump in 2020, even though Republicans won more seats in the House of Representatives from the state.
“In Wisconsin, 64,000 Wisconsinites voted for all Republicans on the ballot and not for Donald Trump,” Ryan said. “That translates across the country in swing states. This is a huge difference-maker. We want to win come 2024, and that means we need to pick someone to be our nominee who will best deliver success. And I think it will be very well known at that time.
‘Worse than Trump’
Ryan is confident that the Republican Party can regain control of the House of Representatives and possibly even the Senate due to negative sentiment on the US economy.
“Everybody knows we’re in or heading into a recession,” Ryan said. “The last headline inflation numbers, the core inflation numbers, are really high. So I think people are more worried about their pocketbooks, about jobs, about what’s going to be economic appearance rather than social issues.
Given the shift in priorities, even nominees supported by Trump could help the party come out on top, simply because “he’s not,” Ryan said, referring to the former president.
“Look, we lost the House, the Senate, and the White House in two years with Trump,” he said. “My party has never lost so quickly. So my point is come 2024, we want to win. We want to beat Biden or the Democrats, whoever they run. And we know — this is just a factual statement, according to the polls — we’re worse off with Trump as our nominee than anybody else.”
According to the latest polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight, more voters will choose Biden than Trump in the 2024 presidential election. However, Biden’s approval rating is only 40%. As a result, Republicans are heavily favored to win the House and may have a chance to flip the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections.
“I think what voters want to do is send a check to Washington,” Ryan said. “They don’t want one-party rule on the left. And that’s why I’m pretty confident in saying we’re going to win the House, and I think we have a very good chance of winning the Senate. And I think in large measure because voters want to check all this leftism, and they want some calm economic policies. That’s why I think we are at the right time. That’s why I think we have the momentum now. Two weeks out, I feel very good, much better than I felt back in August.”
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Adriana Belmonte is a reporter and editor covering politics and health care policy for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter @adrianambells and contact him at [email protected].
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