This past November people across the country voted in the midterm elections to determine who would represent them in Congress, however, another election is on the horizon, the Presidential election.

Even though one year seems far away, preparations for the election are already underway, with several candidates announcing their intentions for candidacy representing different parties.

Naturally as incumbent president, Joe Biden will be representing the Democratic Party next November, but the future of the GOP seems uncertain. Even though Donald Trump has said he will run again, with him being ousted in 2020, and gradually losing supporters ever since, it seems unlikely that he will have the support of the Republican party. According to CNN Politics, in the wake of the Midterms, 

“Trump has been blamed for elevating flawed candidates who spent too much time parroting his claims about election fraud, alienating key voters and ultimately leading to their defeats.”

With Trump’s fall from grace, the GOP is left scattering for a proper candidate to represent them in the 2024 election. At the time of publication, a few candidates have been proposed and discussed by the media, however, according to BallotPedia none have officially filed to run for president with the Federal Election Committee other than former President Trump.

Greg Abbot, Ted Cruz, and Ron Desantis are among some of the popular politicians that have the potential to run for office. Whether they could get the vote is an entirely different question. Texas politicians, Abbot and Cruz, have been in hot water with the public concerning Governor Abbot’s performance and Senator Cruz’s perceived abandonment of citizens during the Texas Power Crisis in February 2021 to go to Cancun.

Another major difficulty for the Republican Party is the fear that many of their constituents died at the height of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 saw the rise of the right-wing extremist group Q-Anon and anti-masking, leading to a rise in COVID related deaths. A study done by the Lancet Regional Health discovered that between April 2021 and March 2022, areas that leaned conservative had a 26 percent higher death rate than their left-wing counterparts. A sharp decline in republican voters cannot bode well for the party, especially as investigations into party members’ involvement in the Capital Attack from Jan. 6, 2021 continue on. 

In an article for the Brookings Institute, Elaine Kamarck found that Republicans who distanced themselves from the Capital Attack had more success in the midterm elections. 

Karmack discovered, “Surprisingly, the candidates who spoke out against the insurrection did better than those who supported it, but the numbers are small…”

These findings might cause more prominent Republicans to distance themselves from the 2020 election and Donald Trump as a whole. However, with the insurrection attempt still at the forefront of many people’s minds, their attempts might be futile. The failed attempt to “stop the steal” and being abandoned by the very people they supported, republican morale is severely low. 

Even with the House of Representatives in republican control, it still took them five days and fifteen rounds of voting to determine a Speaker of the House, a historic feat, with heavy mockery coming from both sides. It is abundantly clear that the GOP will need some serious revamping before the 2024 election if they want to return to being a formidable party.