With Donald Trump winning the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses by a landslide this week, his nomination as the Republican presidential candidate looks highly likely. ABC News’s political forecasting website Fivethiryeight.com estimates Trump leads Republican polls by a wide and increasing margin.
Source: fivethirtyeight.com
This looks likely to set up a Trump vs. Biden general election battle at a time when Biden’s approval rating has been falling sharply. The chart below shows Biden’s net approval rating less Trump’s net approval rating.
For the first half of 2023, Biden was less disliked than Trump (both candidates have net negative approval ratings), yet this has sharply deteriorated over the past six months, with Biden now experiencing a much worse net approval rating than Trump.
Source: fivethirtyeight.com
If this trend continues, a Trump presidency looks increasingly likely. At the same time, the US has become more politically polarised since Trump’s first presidential term.
Surveys by the Pew Research Centre document that Republican and Democratic voters have become more partisan across multiple measures over the past seven years.
The charts below show one example: the deteriorating opinion both Republicans and Democrats have of their political opponents.
Against this backdrop, a second Trump presidency could see more extreme policy shifts from the Biden administration and more deadlock on political issues that require bipartisan cooperation.
While many of these issues will first influence the US economy and companies, US-China relations and the US’s commitment to policing global maritime trade will have significant implications for emerging markets and commodity prices.
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