October 1 marked the first day of the final full month before the 2024 presidential election. This status makes it a bellwether for the dreaded October surprise. These events have become legendary for their ability to change the tenor of a race. They are often unexpected, unprecedented, and so monumental that they can be seen as completely determining the outcome of a presidential victory.
What will the October Surprise Be?
Observers have offered a wide variety of possibilities for a 2024 October surprise. These include everything from a recession or a foreign attack to Joe Biden suddenly deciding to resign. But a large number of pundits and politicians believe that such a change is unlikely in 2024. They have noticed that many earth-shattering electoral events have already happened by now. The most important, clearly, was the decision by Joe Biden to drop out of the race in July and push for his vice president, Kamala Harris, to run instead. Other influential moments were the surprisingly lopsided victory of Donald Trump in this year’s Republican primaries and the decision by RFK Jr. to endorse the former president.
After all of this, the race is still just as tied as it has been in polling for the previous two years. If these events did not fundamentally alter the shape of this race, critics argue, why would something in October do so?
Previous October Surprises
But tumultuous election years in the past have still resulted in October surprises. The presidential election of 1968 was one of the most dramatic. Political observers likely thought that after assassinations, mass protests, arrests, and a president bowing out of reelection, there were no more surprises left to be had.
They were wrong, of course. Future president Nixon upended the race in late October 1968 by pushing the South Vietnamese to scuttle talks for peace in Vietnam. Then, Hubert Humphrey announced on the last day of September that he would oppose the war. These actions occurred in the context of the nation’s most relevant political issue, making it more decisive than debates over campus politics or protests at the Democratic National Convention. They likely contributed to Nixon’s victory and also Humphrey’s close finish, respectively.
The 2016 presidential election also seemed as though it had constant drama that could not be topped in the final month. While 2020 and 2024 seem like momentous contests, they pale in comparison to the sheer firehose of stories that defined 2016. The campaign had everything before October even started: a foreign power hacking the top candidate, regular hacked email disclosures from that candidate’s advisors, evidence of suppression by DNC officials of the Bernie Sanders campaign, daily scandals from the Trump side, and the new specter of fake grassroots events organized by the Russians throughout the country. But all of this was eclipsed in October of that year by the Access Hollywood tape and the announcement that Hillary Clinton was yet again under investigation for potential criminal activity tied back to her email server. The wildest election in recent memory continued to be wild up until Election Day.
The 2024 election already seems dramatic. But in reality, it has been precedented and in some ways staid. The Democratic and Republican candidates have traded leads but never taken decisive control. There is always something that could emerge in the last month of a race that changes our entire view of both candidates and their dynamic. The October surprise will always be threatening in our era of closely matched parties and intense polarization. Both parties need to be ready.