These three are the de facto front-runners. Is one of them going to win?
1,000
3.00Edit: in retrospect, super unpopular incumbents running for reelection is super common. Kicking myself because I spent a day asking myself if I was falling for optimism bias before posting this... and I am now 100% sure I was falling for optimism bias here.
I've flipped here because of the recent spat of bad polls for Biden.
My case:
1. The Dems really don't want to lose to Trump
2. Were the election held today Trump would likely win
3. A generic Democrat polls eight points ahead of Biden
4. We've seen in recent history a strong willingness for the establishment to tip the scales in primaries for the most pragmatic candidate
Dissatisfaction with Biden's age is high even among democrats (the associated press pegged it at nearly 70% in August). There's nobody with name recognition in the Dem primary right now, but you have to know the Gavin Newsoms of the world are looking at the same numbers. If one of them were to jump in, it doesn't stretch the imagination to picture the 7/10 dissatisfied democrats stop ridin with Biden, despite how late in the cycle this.
This is of course to say nothing of the 5-10ish percent chance of either Donald or Joe's health giving out, or the ?% chance of Donald being knocked out by legal issues.
@VerySeriousPoster One serious issue for a potential competitor is that filing dates for getting on state primaries are starting to pass. For example, Alabama's is Nov 10, Arkansas' is Nov 16, Nevada and New Hampshire's have already passed. A lot are in early December or late November. So it's not impossible for someone to compete, but they'd have to declare real soon.
That is definitely a hurdle, but to be fair, not even Biden is on the New Hampshire ballot.
Regardless, primary deadlines still speaks to how quickly this would have to happen. A campaign isn't something you can whip up overnight. I won't dispute N is still very much a lottery.