Biden 2024 Win: What Are the Actuarial Odds that Kamala Takes Over?

According to actuarial tables, there is a 33% chance that if Biden wins re-election in 2024, we will have a President Kamala Harris at some time during those next 4 years.

[Note from author: there have been a few comments and requests based on this article re: (1) what the second term survival probabilities look like for Trump and (2) whether this article reflects a sexist attitude toward Harris. I added info and responses to both items at the bottom of this article in Addendum 1 and Addendum 2.]

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In case you haven’t heard, Joe Biden is running for re-election.

Joe Biden was born on November 20, 1942. He is 80 years old today in October 2023.

If he wins re-election in 2024, he will be 82 years old in January 2025 when taking his second oath of office.

Facts are facts — Joe Biden will not be a spring chicken at that point.

Not only will there be a significant chance — according to the actuarial tables — that he dies during the first year of his second term, it’s also true that his probability of dying will increase every year after that.

Presidents might have access to some really good healthcare, but they are still human.

As a matter of fact, the odds that Biden would pass away as an 82 year-old in that first year of his second term are 8.0%, according to the Social Security Administration’s own actuarial tables. And by the time he is 85 years old during the 4th year of his 2nd term and, the odds that he would pass away in that 4th year will have risen to 10.9%.

But what is the probability that Biden passes away in ANY of those four years during a hypothetical 2nd term?

Obviously the chance that he passes away at any time during those four years has to be greater than the chance of him passing away in any single one of those years, right?

We know that there’s an 8.0% chance Biden would die during the 1st year of a 2nd term, and that probability would grow to 10.9% by the 4th year of this 2nd term.

But how would we calculate the probability for Biden dying at any time during his 2nd term as President?

Turns out it’s pretty easy, as long as we get a bit creative about how we ask the question.

Change the question we’re asking to make it easier to get to an answer

Instead of asking what the chances are that Biden would pass away in any one of those years, we’re going to turn it around and ask the question in a different way:

What are the odds that Biden survives EVERY ONE of the 4 years of a hypothetical second term?

Or said another way, “What are the chances that Biden:

1. makes it through the 1st year without dying;
2. then makes it through the 2nd year without dying;
3. then makes it through the 3rd year without dying;
4. and then makes it through his 4th year of the 2nd term without dying?”

When we frame it that way, the calculation is actually pretty simple.

We just (1) multiply each of those single-year survival probabilities times each other, and (2) that gives us the probability of him surviving all four years.

Then we subtract that number from “100%” to get the chance that he would NOT survive all 4 years . . . and that we would have a President Kamala Harris finish up Biden’s 2nd term.

And that gives us the answer we are looking for.

The probability that Biden would die sometime during his 2nd term is about 33%, which means there is also about a 1/3 chance that Kamala Harris would become President sometime during those 4 years.

Finally, let’s add in a few caveats and fine-tunes to our calculation.

Fine-tune #1 — Biden gets what is probably the best healthcare in the world.

This can only work to Biden’s advantage in terms of living longer than the average person.

Fine-tune #2 — Biden seems to be in below-average shape for an 80 year-old guy.

I’m going by what we see on TV — on those rare occasions when they let Biden out in public — and it’s not good. If you compare it to how healthy and energetic Biden seemed 10 years ago, there has been an obvious and substantial decline.

Compare 80 year-old Joe Biden to 82 year-old Bernie Sanders. Sanders clearly appears and behaves as though he is in far better physical shape than Biden is. Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman are both in their mid-80s, and they both appear to be in better physical shape than Joe Biden.

I’m not saying that there are no people in their 80s who are physically capable of handling the rigors of being President.

I am saying that I doubt Joe Biden’s ability to do so based on what we see of him these days.

Biden’s rapid physical decline over the past 5–10 years seems likely to work to his disadvantage in terms of life expectancy.

Fine-tune #3 — Biden dying is NOT the only way that he could end up not serving a full second term as president.

Biden has not only declined physically over the past 5–10 years, he has also clearly declined cognitively over that time, too.

It’s possible to make a persuasive argument today that Biden is no longer cognitively fit for the office of President.

If you have any doubt on this point, just imagine Biden having to stand for a debate with Marianne Williamson or Cornell West.

We might feel sorry for Biden today given how far away he is cognitively from the Joe Biden who successfully went toe-to-toe with Paul Ryan during the 2012 Vice-Presidential debate.

Unfortunately for America, that is NOT the Joe Biden we have in the White House today. (And Americans have a right to expect a cognitively sharp President running things in the Oval Office.)

It is no stretch of imagination to suggest that there is a substantial chance that Biden really could slip so far cognitively during a second term that there would be no covering it up.

If that happens, he would be forced to either step down, or his cabinet and VP — if they uphold their responsibilities to the country — would have to vote to relieve him of his office via the 25th Amendment.

I’m not saying this is a 90% probability — or even a 20% probability — but my personal gut feel is that there’s probably a 5–10% chance that given how dazed and confused Biden already seems much of the time at age 80, the 85 year-old version of Biden is NOT going to be sharper.

That 5 year-older version of Biden will probably have declined further in terms of his cognitive ability.

So I think it is totally reasonable to add at least another few percentage points to the likelihood that we see VP Kamala Harris ascend to the presidence at SOME point during Biden’s second term.

Where do we net out in terms of “percentage likelihood of a President Kamala Harris” due to Biden not being able to finish out a second term?

I’m going to assume that Fine-Tune #1 and Fine-Tune #2 cancel each other out.

That leaves us with Fine-Tune #3 — Biden’s cognitive decline — to factor in.

If we were already at a 32.6% chance of Biden dying in office during a 2nd term, then I think it’s reasonable to factor in the cognitive decline and “round up” to a 40% chance of us ending up with President Kamala Harris sometime before January 2029 if Biden gets re-elected next year.

With a roughly 40% chance of a vote for Biden in 2024 really also being a vote for Harris for President, I think it is important that people factor this possibility in with their voting decision.

You may like Harris, you may not like her — that’s up to you. But I would not assume that there is only a tiny chance of her becoming president via Biden dying or becoming incapacitated.

40% is a lot more than a “tiny chance.”

However you feel about Harris — pro or con — factor a 40% chance of her becoming President during Biden’s 2nd term into your voting decision.

Check out the first 1.5 minutes of this video. These women from Atlanta expressed themselves with clarity during the last couple weeks of the 2020 election. The points they made starting at the 1:20 mark — particularly their scathing comments about “identity politics” — are spot on.

Whether a person agrees or disagrees with these women, it would serve the Democratic Party and the American public well if they encouraged this caliber and quality of debate about Biden and his ability to handle a second term.

Addendum 1. What do the mortality rate percentages look like for Trump?

Two readers — Matt Drabek and Dana Ann — asked what comparable numbers look like for Trump.

Here are the numbers for Trump:

The results for Trump

When I run the numbers for Trump’s case, his odds of survival over all four years of a potential second term are about 76%.

So based on the actuarial table, the odds are that there is a roughly 24% chance that Trump would pass away sometime during that second term.

A few notes about the calculations for Trump.

Because Trump’s birthday (June 14, 1946) is close to halfway between “years of age” for the Social Security Administration’s actuarial table for each of the calendar years that Trump would be president if he were to win in 2024, I took the average for each pair of Trump’s “age years” for the years in that potential second term. This has the effect of giving Trump 5 weeks’ worth of “benefit of the doubt” on his age — i.e., makes him look probably about 5 weeks younger than he actually is vis-a-vis the actuarial table.

In Biden’s case, I made a similar assumption because Biden’s birth date (November 20, 1942) is 2 months before Inauguration Day. This means in the eyes of the actuarial table, Biden looks about 8 weeks younger than he actually is.

All that said, I do not believe that these approximations make a meaningful difference in the probabilities we come up with for either candidate.

The difference in expected mortality between Trump and Biden

Dana Ann also asked me to opine with a “concomitant analysis of his cognitive decline” based on her perception that Trump, too, seems to have been declining some lately.

With the caveat that — as with my opining on Biden’s cognitive state elsewhere in this article — I am not a trained medical professional, and I’m just going by what I have seen in public of both presidents currently and over recent decades, here goes.

If look at old videos of Trump from the 80s and 90s, he was a very different guy from the person you see today. Smart, articulate, intelligent-sounding. You may not have agreed with much of what he said even back then, but there was clearly a much better brain behind his comments than there seems to be these days.

These two videos (above and below) give a good sense as to how sharp Trump was a few decades ago. Trump either had more ability to think clearly back then or just better speaking ability (or both?) than he demonstrates today when he is being interviewed.

I think that some of the Trump we see today is just him having intentionally evolved himself away from sounding “too intellectual” since he thought — probably correctly — that that would appeal more to the base of voters he ended up trying to win over.

I also think, though, that part of the 77 year-old Trump we’re seeing today stems from what could just be a normal aging process. The guy is 77 years old. Even without any medically diagnosable cognitive decline — and who knows, there might be some of that, too — the average person slows down some as they get into their 70s and 80s.

(Btw, this is a separate conversation that we should all be having, but I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest in the U.S. — other than corporations and the folks in the donor class — for us to have such a large number of our political/governmental leaders be in their 70s and 80s and knock-knock-knockin’ on 90s doors.)

That said, if you compare Trump today to the Trump of even 3 or 4 years ago, I think there is a perceptible slowing down of his mind and his ability to communicate.

Is Trump’s slowing down as substantial as Biden’s has been? My personal sense is that no, Trump has not slowed down as much as Biden has.

I’m less inclined to weigh in on what the impact of Trump’s age here might have on his choice for a VP this time around, since the Republicans are actually having a primary process. While it seems unlikely that someone from that “folks other than Trump” field of candidates will actually win the nomination next year, it is possible it will have an effect on who Trump chooses for VP.

For now, I‘m going to hold off my opining until the primary mess on the Republican side clears up some.

Of course, if anyone else wants to speculate or share their opinion in the comments section, I’m all ears.

Addendum 2. Is calling out Kamala Harris by name a sexist thing?

A reader expressed frustration about the history of sexism in this country and suggested that with regard to this article, “the sexism is showing.”

I share her frustration about sexism in the U.S., but disagree that expressing legitimate concerns about Harris and her capabilities automatically equals sexism.

First, while I do have concerns about Harris and her competence, (1) those concerns were not the original point of this article; and (2) those concerns are shared by a substantial percentage of American voters.

• A recent Washington Post article — “How Americans feel about Kamala Harris becoming president” — detailed the results of a CBS News/YouGov poll that asked a number of questions about Harris.
• “…just 30 percent of Democrats said they feel “enthusiastic” about Harris as Biden’s running mate. While three-quarters of Democrats said they were at least “satisfied” with Harris on the ticket, [the] “enthusiastic” number is cut nearly in half from where it was shortly after Biden picked her for his 2020 ticket. At the time, 58 percent were enthusiastic.”

As this poll and others make clear, it’s not just Republican voters who express concerns about Harris. Democratic voters have those concerns, too, even if not to the same degree.

4 general points in Addendum 2:

1. The Democratic Party leadership and their supporters have a particular attack strategy these days that they use to shut down any kind of criticism on themselves. They go for the “ad hominem” attack — i.e., making it personal and going after the person instead of the position. Or they toss out ridiculous, nonsensical objections to reasonable questions with the expectation that friendly “journalists” aren’t going to press them any further. It’s what they do when they realize they can’t debate on the facts of a situation. And to a large enough extent, it has worked for them. To be fair sometimes it _is_ the case that the issue is sexism or racism or other forms of bigotry — but these ad hominem attacks have become Democratic leadership’s go-to approach for virtually anyone who disagrees with them. That’s not acceptable.
2. Is it sexism when other women also express concerns about Harris’ capabilities? And especially when these other voices range from regular voters to women at the top of the political power food chain?
3. It’s worth doing a side-by-side comparison of Harris against other politicians — both women and men. Judge them all by the principles they say they stand for and their track records of working on behalf of those principles. Judge them by their ability to articulate a clear vision and path for achieving it. Judge them then by the work they do to actually make that vision a reality. Judge them by whether they actually get anything done. Judge them by their ability to communicate clearly and their ability to inspire people. If we look at Harris side-by-side with other politicians and leaders and see something that feels like only a 10 or 25% difference, then I don’t think that’s enough to make an issue of. But if we’re seeing a qualitative difference where one person is clearly and objectively performing well against the criteria I listed above and the other person is not, then yeah, that’s a problem.
4. It’s important to judge everyone by the same criteria. No one gets a free pass. If you’re in public life, you are there to serve the public. We voters have a right — and an obligation — to judge elected leaders based on their performance.

What about when it is women expressing the concerns about Harris?

Is it sexism when women either (1) don’t support Harris or (2) call out Centrist Democrats for automatically assuming that just because someone looks like you, they’re going to have your best interests at heart?

Is the young woman in this video (below) “sexist” for saying the following in response to the question from the MSNBC interviewer asking if the inclusion of Kamala Harris on Biden’s ticket swayed them toward supporting Biden?

“I hold officials accountable, I don’t care what color you are. And I think that too often we automatically think that because someone looks like you that they’re going to have your best interests at heart, and that’s just simply not true.“

Her answer starts just after the 1:20 mark, but do listen to the first minute of the video for context.

Personally, I think this woman’s answer is total common sense and persuasive.

Or how about Nancy Pelosi — was she being sexist toward Harris recently (September 2023) when she was recently asked 3 times on CNN whether she endorsed Harris…and refused each time to answer?

And what should people make of Marcia Fudge — former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus — questioning Harris’ competence back in 2019 after Harris dropped out of the Democratic Primary with polling in the low single digits.

Ms. Fudge noted that “Ms. Harris bore a measure of responsibility for her problems — ‘it’s her campaign’ — and that the structure she created has not served her well. ‘I have told her there needs to be a change, said Ms. Fudge, one of several women of color who have been delivering hard-to-hear advice to Ms. Harris in recent weeks.”

Bottom line, it’s not just rank-and-file Democratic voters who have concerns about Harris.

My perspective on this

#1. I am objective — not neutral — on issues like this. Show me facts and data, and I am persuadable. I’m not persuadable by bullying or by personal attacks.

#2. The U.S. has a set of key issues and big problems to deal with, including:

• climate change;
• corruption in U.S. politics, government, regulatory systems, and corporations;
• broken-down and corrupt healthcare system;
• unaffordable housing;
• student debt and unaffordable education.

I judge candidates and officeholders by what they (1) credibly commit to doing about these issues and then (2) what they actually do.

I don’t just judge them by what they say they’ll do, I judge them by what they actually work on and get done.

#3. Below are 4 people who I think are appropriate to compare and contrast Kamala Harris with.

I’m familiar with each of them, and I’m aware of their strengths and weaknesses. In general, they are either already doing great work on issues I care about or they have credibly committed themselves to working on these issues if they are elected to office:

• Katie Porter. Democratic Congresswoman from Southern California. She won in a purple district, and she is currently running for U.S. Senate. I think she is the best person in Congress in terms of (1) the issues she is tackling; (2) the quality of work she is doing; and (3) the results she is getting. If you’re not already familiar with her, I’ve written two articles recently on the great work Rep. Porter is doing in the healthcare space: “The Embarrassing Part about Big Pharma’s Dirty Little Secret” and “For-Profit Health Insurance: Slow Death by 200 Billion Paper Cuts in the U.S.”
• Marianne Williamson, Democratic candidate for President. Based on her policy positions; how smart she is; how capable a fighter she is; and my confidence that she’ll deliver on her promises and commitments if elected, she has earned my vote for President.
• Lina Khan. Chair of the Federal Trade Commission. FTC Chair Khan is doing phenomenal work heading up the FTC. Appointing her was one of the two best things to come out of the Biden Administration’s first two and a half years. She is smart, capable, principled, and willing and able to fight in support of those principles.
• Morgan Harper. Democratic Congressional candidate in central Ohio in 2020. Her platform focused on “universal child care, tuition-free public college, Medicare for All, reparations, affordable housing, and a Green New Deal. I spent a week in January 2020 visiting family in Ohio and spending 4 days working on Morgan’s campaign, going door-to-door canvassing neighborhoods near Columbus. Doing “door knocks” is about as committed and “feet on the ground” as you get in supporting a candidate. In the process, I got a good sense of the kind of woman Morgan Harper is and her commitment on issues that matter for regular people.

I’m enthusiastic about these four people not because of their gender but because they are principled; they all demonstrate character, courage, and serious work ethics; and in the cases of Porter, Williamson, and Harper, they all made it clear that they felt they had to earn the votes of their supporters.

Contrast that last point about “them needing to earn my vote” with the entitlement that so many Centrist Democrat leaders feel they have when it comes to voters “owing” them their votes.

I gravitate toward politicians and leaders who feel they have to earn my vote and support and who make it clear that — if elected — they will feel a strong obligation to then deliver on their commitments.

At the same time, I recoil away from politicians who make it clear they feel entitled to my vote without having to do any work or deliver anything in return for my vote.

Judge everyone by the same standards and metrics

Finally, I think it’s important to judge all politicians by the same standards.

No one deserves a free pass in American politics. Not Harris. Not Trump. Not Joe Biden. Not Jared Kushner. Not Hunter Biden. Not Nancy Pelosi. Not Mitch McConnell. Not Joe Manchin. Not Clarence Thomas.

None of these people or their colleagues should get free passes.

It has to be the same standards for all of them.

AND they all must be held to standards that are at least as tough as regular working Americans are held to under U.S. law and ethical standards.

Does anyone think that these are unreasonable positions to take?

[end of Addendum 2]

Again, thank you for reading, subscribing, clapping, and sharing — I appreciate your time and attention.

Jeffrey Goodman

Related and recent articles

• A Friend Texted to Ask “Who I Favored” for 2024 but Hated My Answer • My Health Insurance Company Asked for Feedback on My Specialist. I Blew My Top. • Has U.S. Healthcare Really Become a Mob Protection Racket? • Life Expectancy vs. Healthcare Costs in the U.S., Japan, Germany, etc. • My Top 1% Friend Was Floored by the Cost of His Family’s Health Insurance

(Subscribe to receive email notifications when I post new articles.)