Biden v Trump: What is at stake in the 2024 US presidential election?

On 5 November 2024, up to 161 million American voters will go to the polls to vote for the next president of the United States – and will be faced with a choice between the same two candidates that stood in 2020. Joe Biden, the incumbent, will again face Donald Trump – the former president who lost to Biden in 2020. But polling suggests many voters are less than enthused by the choice. Non-MAGA Republicans feeling queasy about the prospect of Trump – who is still facing a pile of legal challenges – returning to the White House, and many Democrats wonder if Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second presidential term, is the best possible candidate.

So what are we to make of American politics? How does their system work? What will happen in the election? What could this mean for the UK? And is politics in the US a guide to what might happen in the UK? 

On this week’s Expert Factor, the team take a deep breath and take a deep dive into US politics. Mark Landler, London Bureau Chief of the New York Times and a former White House correspondent, joins Hannah, Paul and Anand, who dials in from Boston, to try and make sense of a presidential election that will have consequences across the world.

THE EXPERT FACTOR is the podcast for people who haven’t had enough of experts. Each week the directors of three leading and respected think tanks – Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Hannah White of the Institute for Government, and Anand Menon of UK in a Changing Europe – get together to discuss, debate and explain the big questions and themes that will shape the election – and the political landscape for years to come.