Donald Trump can achieve something that hasn’t happened in 132 years

Donald Trump can make history as only the second US president to serve non-consecutive terms if he wins the 2024 presidential election, a feat last achieved 132 years ago.

Trump is the first defeated president to run again since the late 19th century. While President Theodore Roosevelt ran for a third term in 1912, he was not previously defeated and did not 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 in his 1888 re-election bid by Republican Benjamin Harrison despite winning the popular vote on both occasions.

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

Four years after his failed run, Cleveland was the Democratic presidential nominee again and went on to win the 1892 election against Harrison, the only US president to do so. Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th US President.

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

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

Newsweek contacted Trump’s campaign for comment via email.

Trump, the third-term Republican presidential nominee — 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 aggregate polls show Harris leading in the popular vote, with margins narrowing daily. As of Friday, The Hill Harris shows up 0.3 percentage points, New York Times overall has her up by 1 point and 538 finds her ahead by 1.2 points. RealClearPolling shows Trump ahead by 0.3 percentage points.

Several prognosticators estimate that Trump will win the election.

As of Friday afternoon, 538’s forecast gave Trump a 52 percent chance of winning to Harris’ 48 percent. Pollster Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin projects an even wider margin, with Trump at a 53.8 percent probability of winning to Harris’ 45.8 percent.

The Hill’s forecast says there is a 54 percent chance Trump will win the presidency.

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

The 2024 election will largely be decided by several thousand votes in crucial battleground states, where the two major party candidates are especially competing for Pennsylvania, the battleground state with the most electoral votes, 19.

The polls have been very tight in the seven key battleground states. From Friday afternoon d. New York Times overall poll showed Trump ahead in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania, while Harris ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan.