Joe Biden's Reelection Chances May Be Doomed Due to This Historical Trend

President Joe Biden could be facing a serious challenge to his chances of getting re-elected in 2024 if history repeats itself.

Whether facing off against former President Donald Trump or another hopeful for the Republican nomination for president next fall, Biden will have the advantage of incumbency behind him. Sitting presidents have lost re-election fewer than a dozen times in U.S. history, while only one sitting president previously chosen by voters—Franklin Pierce, in 1856—was ever denied his party's nomination for re-election.

But he also has another historical precedent potentially standing in his way. Since 1972, no sitting president to face a serious primary challenger has won re-election. And at this point, Biden has several.

In March, author and 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson announced her second longshot bid for the Democratic nomination for president, calling for the necessity for the United States to embrace a "vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear."

The following month, anti-vaxxer and environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy announced his own bid for Biden's post, pitching himself as an antidote to the political divisions that have roiled the country for decades. And late last week, leftist philosopher Cornel West launched his presidential bid on the hard-left People's Party ticket, pledging to provide an alternative to the "milquetoast" policies of the current Democratic establishment.

All of them are unlikely to win. Kennedy, in most polls, commands the support of fewer than 20 percent of Democratic Primary voters in most polls, while Williamson's support is beginning to grow from her start in the low-single digits. West, meanwhile, faces the historic precedent of third-party candidates having little—if any—success in modern presidential elections, and likely remains a longshot to win due to his party's lack of ballot access in a race many anticipate will come down to a handful of purple, battleground states.

If anything, the bevy of new challengers could be seen more as a canary in the coal mine indicating brewing discontent with Biden's presidency.

"There is no question that a primary challenge to an incumbent is a waving red flag of party discontent," Rick Shenkman, a presidential historian and founder of George Washington University's History News Network (HNN), told Newsweek on Friday. "An incumbent's chief advantage is that they almost always are re-nominated, which gives the incumbent party an overwhelming advantage in the general election. While the incumbent sails toward their nomination, the rival candidates in the other party are shredding each other viciously."

While he enjoys healthy support from within his party, carrying an approval rating of nearly 80 percent among Democrats according to a recent AP-NORC poll, nearly one-quarter of Democrats disapprove of his job performance, while most Democrats are either ambivalent or disapproving of the 80-year-old's pursuit of a second term. And historically, divided parties—no matter the size of the defecting group—have been a bad omen for their chances to maintain control of the Oval Office.

Former White House communications director Pat Buchanan, for example, got one-quarter of the vote in the 1992 Republican primaries ahead of what would prove to be a disastrous re-election campaign for then-President George H.W. Bush.

After ascending to the presidency after the resignation of President Richard Nixon, the gaffe-prone and controversial Republican incumbent Gerald Ford faced a tough primary against future president Ronald Reagan in that year's Republican primaries, setting the stage for Georgia Democrat Jimmy Carter to win by two points in the 1976 general election.

And while he easily won his party's nomination in 2020, Trump faced several minor primary challenges from moderates like former Congressman Joe Walsh and former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, who felt the GOP had strayed too far from its principles under Trump.

In all of those scenarios, the incumbent faced formidable levels of discontent within their party's ranks. Bush, for example, was targeted by party conservatives for reneging on his "no new taxes" pledge, while Ford inspired a revolt within the party following the appointment of liberal New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president.

While Biden enjoys popularity within his party, he has also received significant criticism from the far left, with some progressives mulling the prospect of backing a primary challenger against him well before the 2022 midterms were in full force.

That in itself was enough to damage him in the eyes of other voters, Shenkman said.

"It was foolish for Democrats to be talking openly about their discontent with Biden in the winter," he added. "Whatever their concerns about his age, running an incumbent for president again was always going to be advantageous. Throwing away incumbency would have been political malpractice."

Should Trump win, Biden enjoys the advantage of facing a historically divisive candidate in the general that could prove a boon to his chances. While Biden falters in numerous polls against a generic Republican, national polls show Biden with a slight advantage over Trump in national elections, while battleground state polling also offers optimistic figures.

In one Cygnal poll released Friday, Biden is essentially neck-and-neck with Trump in a head-to-head contest in the key state of Georgia. However, against a generic Republican, Biden is currently projected to lose by double-digits in a state that was decided by fewer than 12,000 votes in the last election.

Update 6/9/2023, 1:29 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Rick Shenkman.