A top strategist with JPMorgan Chase predicted President Joe Biden will drop out of the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment strategy with the bank, compiled a list of “Top ten surprises for 2024.” Other predictions consisted of the Ukraine-Russia war dragging on for another year, stocks doing well in 2024, major cities in the United States facing electric power outages or gas shortages due to an “underinvestment in pipelines, gas storage and winterization” and the “retirement of dispatchable power generation.”
In his prediction, Cembalest speculated Biden, 81, will drop out of the presidential election “sometime between Super Tuesday and the November election” for health-related reasons.
“Market Strategist Byron Wien passed away last year at the age of 90. For over 30 years whether at Morgan Stanley or Blackstone, Byron published a top ten list of surprises for the following year,” Cembalest wrote. “I never read any of the articles that kept score on how well Byron’s predictions did since that’s not the point. They were an exercise in thinking against the grain about what might happen in an industry dominated by consensus.”
Cembalest referenced Biden’s low approval rating, especially for a president who claims a “10% job creation since his inauguration.”
Biden’s overall approval rating currently sits at 38.8% to date with a disapproval rating of 56%, according to FiveThirtyEight.
While Cembalest acknowledged Biden’s low approval rating, he says that “figure is the by-product of his inauguration coinciding with the rollout of COVID vaccines and a reopening US economy.”
Cembalest is not the first to predict that Biden may drop out. There has been speculation that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) or former First Lady Michelle Obama may take Biden’s place as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Currently, Rep. Dean Phillipps (D-Minn.) and author Marianne Williamson are running against Biden on the Democratic side with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running as an Independent candidate.
On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump remains at the top of polls against other candidates — entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.