President Joe Biden has ended his re-election campaign. Credit: Alamy
On July 21, President Joe Biden announced that he was ending his re-election campaign.
In a written statement, the 81-year-old said it had been his ‘greatest honor’ to serve but his withdrawal was ‘in the best interest of my party and the country.’
The abrupt conclusion to his political career followed a growing concern within the Democrat party that he was too frail to serve.
After dropping out of the presidential race, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, who has the backing of her party.
Harris is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history. She’s also the first Black American and South Asian American vice president, per the White House.
Harris is up against Republican candidate Donald Trump, who served as president of the U.S. from 2017 to 2021.
As both candidates spend time fortifying their support, new polls suggest the pair are tied in several battleground states, per NBC News.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, Harris held a marginal one-percentage point over Trump, the vice president led 43% to Trump’s 42%.
According to the nonpartisan voter registration site Vote.org, voter registrations spiked after it was announced Harris was in the running.
CEO Andrea Hailey posted on X (formerly Twitter): “We registered nearly 40,000 voters – an almost 700% daily increase in new registration.
“That’s the largest number of new voters registered over a 48-hour period we’ve seen this entire cycle.”
In the build-up to the election, it’s been said that Trump could lose valuable votes due to the Republican nominee for vice president, J.D. Vance.
After the 78-year-old announced the Ohio senator as his running mate, Vance’s past comments resurfaced.
In 2021, he questioned why some leading politicians, including Harris, do not have children.
At the time, Vance said (per the BBC): “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.
“How does it make any sense we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
He added that the country was being run ‘by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.’
During a recent appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show, Vance defended his resurfaced comments, stating: “Obviously it was a sarcastic comment. People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said.
“The substance of what I said, Megyn – I’m sorry, it’s true.”
He added: “This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-children.”
Amid the build-up to the election, Lichtman has shared an update on his complicated prediction model.
The model, or ‘keys’ as Lichtman calls them, is 13 true/false questions and a decision rule: if six or more keys go against the White House party, they lose. Otherwise, they win.
According to the American University website, keys include party mandate, short and long-term economy, policy changes, and social unrest.
With less than 100 days until the election, Lichtman says the keys lean in Harris’ favor.
Taking to X, he writes: “Biden’s withdrawal cost Democrats the Incumbency Key on my 13 Keys to the White House prediction system. But the excitement generated by his endorsement of VP Harris makes it very likely that they retain the Contest Key as she becomes the consensus nominee.”
The professor told C-SPAN (per Daily Mail): “I have not made a final prediction. I’ve said I will make it after the Democratic convention.
“But I have said for months, and I continue to say a lot would have to go wrong for Democrats to lose.
“That could happen, but a lot would have to change.”