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Donald Trump could achieve something that hasn't happened in 132 years


Donald Trump could achieve something that hasn't happened in 132 years

Donald Trump could go down in history as only the second U.S. president if he wins the 2024 presidential election, a feat last achieved 132 years ago.

Trump is the first defeated president to run for office again since the late 19th century. While President Theodore Roosevelt ran for a third term in 1912, he was previously undefeated and failed to secure a major party nomination.

Only one person has served two non-consecutive terms in the White House: Grover Cleveland. The Democrat was first elected president in 1884. He was defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison for re-election in 1888, although he won the popular vote both times.

To win the presidency, a candidate must secure 270 Electoral College votes, which does not always line up with the national popular vote, as was most recently the case in 2016 when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016.

Four years after his unsuccessful candidacy, Cleveland was again the Democratic presidential candidate and won the 1892 election against Harrison, the only American president to do so. Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th U.S. Presidents.

Cleveland & Trump
L: Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) served two nonconsecutive terms as president. (R): Donald Trump, shown at a rally in Atlanta, will become the second president ever to serve non-consecutive terms if he wins the 2024 election.

Anna Moneymaker/Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

Newsweek Trump's campaign emailed for comment.

Trump, the Republican presidential candidate for the third time – first in 2016, then in 2020 and now in 2024 – is in an extraordinarily close race for the White House against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Most national polls show Harris leading the popular vote, with margins narrowing every day. As of Friday, The Hill shows Harris is up 0.3 percentage points. The New York Times Overall, it is up 1 point, and 538 has a 1.2 point lead. RealClearPolling shows Trump with a lead of 0.3 percentage points.

Several forecasters expect Trump to win the election.

As of Friday afternoon, 538's forecast showed Trump had a 52 percent chance of winning, while Harris was at 48 percent. Pollster Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin predicts an even larger lead: Trump has a 53.8 percent chance of winning, while Harris has a 45.8 percent chance of winning.

Hill's forecast says there is a 54 percent chance of Trump winning the presidency.

In 2020, incumbent Trump lost the presidential election to President Joe Biden. The Democratic candidate secured several key battleground states, including Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

The 2024 election will largely be similarly determined by several thousand votes in key battleground states, with the two major party candidates vying in particular for Pennsylvania, the battleground state with the most votes in the Electoral College, March 19.

In the seven most important contested states, the polls were very close. As of Friday afternoon, The New York Times The overall poll showed Trump leading in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania, while Harris was ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan.

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