Democratic Party leaders are desperate to identify the so-called most electable candidates for the 2028 presidential campaign. As soon as the November midterms are over, the primary season begins.

Political professionals will deploy armies of pollsters armed with the latest data and statistics to vet every individual who enters the race. Given the existential threat that many party members believe President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicanism pose to the nation, their highest aim is reclaiming power. For now, policy and ideological debates must be set aside. The overriding question is simple: Which candidate is most likely to help Democrats defeat Republicans on Election Day in 2028?

Democratic Party leaders are desperate to identify the so-called most electable candidates for the 2028 presidential campaign. As soon as the November midterms are over, the primary season begins.

Political professionals will deploy armies of pollsters armed with the latest data and statistics to vet every individual who enters the race. Given the existential threat that many party members believe President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicanism pose to the nation, their highest aim is reclaiming power. For now, policy and ideological debates must be set aside. The overriding question is simple: Which candidate is most likely to help Democrats defeat Republicans on Election Day in 2028?

While this issue has surfaced repeatedly in recent midterm contests, those intraparty debates were merely a preview of the far more consequential battles that will unfold during the presidential primaries.

The problem is that determining who is “most electable” is rarely easy. Modern U.S. history is filled with examples of candidates initially dismissed as unelectable who went on to win both their party’s nomination and the presidency. In 1976, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter, who had faced the question “Jimmy Who?” after announcing his candidacy, won out over far better-known Democrats in the primaries before going on to defeat President Gerald Ford. In 1980, Ronald Reagan, still regarded by many as an anti-establishment figure whose conservatism seemed too far to the right for the electorate, overcame more traditional Republican figures such as George H.W. Bush and then defeated Carter, launching a two-term presidency that transformed U.S. politics.

Most recently, Trump’s improbable victories in both in 2016 and 2024 stunned much of the political establishment. Yet Trump quickly evolved from a political outsider into the defining figure of a generation of Republican politics.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of an ostensibly unelectable candidate prevailing was Barack Obama. In 2008, he defied the nation’s racial history and the widespread assumption that a Black man could not win the presidency. During the primaries, he defeated a well-known, safer, and more established candidate, Hillary Clinton, before........

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