2024 United States Presidential Election (Om's World)

The 2024 United States presidential election was the 60th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. The Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper defeated the Republican ticket of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. Incumbent president Joe Biden opted not to run for re-election. This was the first election in which a female was elected President of the United States. This was also the first election in which both major party tickets consisted of at least one female candidate.

Following Biden's announcement that he would not run for re-election, citing health concerns and a desire to "pass on the torch of the Democratic party to a new generation of leaders," Harris was an immediate favorite to win the Democratic nomination. Biden's endorsement, and those of most other high profile Democrats, allowed her to secure the Democratic nomination with ease. DeSantis secured the Republicans nomination in a crowded field that included numerous high profile Republicans such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. Upon securing the nomination, DeSantis selected South Carolina Senator Tim Scott as his running mate, making him the first African American to be nominated for Vice President. However, revelations about an affair with congressional staffer resulted in his nomination being withdrawn just four weeks later in favor of former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Haley was the second woman of Indian descent and the fourth woman to be nominated for the position.

The election season was embroiled with controversies over election reform laws and gerrymandering enacted at the state level in mostly Republican states after former President Trump's election loss in 2020. Election lawsuits were filed by both campaigns, and protests in response to these laws before and during the election season were held in cities across the country. Although under pressure to reject the election results, DeSantis conceded to Harris in a speech on November 6, the day after election day. In a twitter rant after the election, Trump condemned DeSantis for his concession, in one tweet accusing DeSantis of being a "Democrat operative" and suggesting that he should have run instead. Trump's allegations and tweets prompted DeSantis to retract his concession and the newly-elected Republican governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, to refuse to certify North Carolina's electoral votes for Harris. The Harris campaign promptly threatened Robinson with a lawsuit and mass demonstrations broke out in Raleigh in the hundreds of thousands. Robinson was eventually pressured by party officials to certify the results. 28 Republican senators and 185 republican congressmen still refused to certify the results in Congress.

Harris sought to tie herself closely to Biden, who despite facing two years of congressional gridlock in the latter two years of his term was in good standing with the American public and presided over a fast economic recovery. The Harris campaign also tried to rebuild Democratic support among Hispanic voters who had shifted away from Democrats in the previous election by running advertisements in Spanish and supporting local outreach organizations. DeSantis meanwhile sought to position himself as a successor to Trump. DeSantis stressed his record as Governor of Florida and ability to balance pragmatic governance with the passage of conservative policies in an bid to appeal to both suburban moderates and Republican base voters. DeSantis was also critical of Harris, who he frequently referred to as a "woke socialist."

Harris did not hold onto Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nebraska's second congressional district, races which Biden won in the previous presidential election. The latter race was gerrymandered into a safe Republican district. She did, however, hold on to the sunbelt states of Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, and expanded on Biden's map by winning North Carolina, likely due to her selection of popular incumbent Governor Roy Cooper as her running mate, thus securing her an electoral college victory. This election broke the brief, 2-election bellweather streak of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and revealed the increasing electoral importance of the sunbelt states.

Democratic Party
Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party on June 5, 2024, when she secured enough delegates to ensure her nomination at the national convention. She was formally nominated at the convention on July 22.

Republican Party
Ron DeSantis became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party on June 12, 2024, when he secured enough delegates to ensure his nomination at the national convention. He was formally nominated at the convention on July 15. Tim Scott was formally nominated for Vice President, although revelations about an affair with a staffer resulted in his nomination being formally revoked in favor of fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley.

Lila Capps Scandal
On July 29, 2024, just two weeks after Tim Scott's nomination for Vice President on the Republican ticket, left-leaning publican Huffington Post released a article accusing Scott of an affair with one of his staffers, Lila Capps. Scott vehemently denied the allegation, alleging the article to be "nothing more than a left wing hit piece." Days later, recordings of a flirtatious exchange between Scott and the staffer were leaked by an anonymous user on Reddit and quickly garnered attention from major publications and news networks. Fearing damage to his campaign, DeSantis urged Scott to step down from his position as nominee. Scott did so without making a public announcement, and on August 3, Nikki Haley was nominated to the vacant position.

Voting reform laws
Despite then-attourney general Bill Barr and numerous international democracy watchdogs confirming that there were no issues with the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump blamed mail-in ballots, undocumented immigrants, and rigged voting machines for his election loss, insisting that the election was rigged against him. As a result, Republican legislatures and governors across the country passed election reform bills. Such bills restricted access to the ballot box for convicted felons and included provisions that generally made it more difficult to vote. Georgia Senate Bill 202, passed by the Georgia state legislature in early 2021, was an early source of contention, as it required voter ID requirements on absentee ballots, limited the use of ballot drop boxes, and made it a crime for outside groups to give free food or water to voters waiting in line. States such as Texas and Florida followed suit with similar laws, and after the 2022 midterm elections, newly elected republican trifectas in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania did the same. Large companies including Amazon, Coca Cola, and Starbucks announced their opposition to the laws in a show of solidarity with voting-rights groups who had fought hard to prevent the passage of the bills. After the 2022 elections, governor Greg Abbott of Texas, sensing his state's leftward shift, publicly weighed switching switching the state to the Maine/Nebraska system of electoral vote allocation, which threatened to give a majority of the state's electoral votes to Republican residential candidates in spite of Democratic statewide wins due to the state's heavy Republican gerrymander. This suggestion caused public outcry and Abbott was ultimately dissuaded from enacting such a reform. The Harris campaign promised to enact major election reforms at the federal level in order to counter these laws. The DeSantis campaign accused the Harris campaign of trying to "harvest" ballots and campaigned on the unpopular provision of Harris's voting rights plan, which would have financed political campaigns with taxpayer money.

Impeachment of Joe Biden
After Republicans took control of the House of Representatives with a 236-199 majority and a 52-48 majority in the US Senate during the 2022 midterm elections, some members of the House, with the urging of former President Trump, expressed the need to impeach the sitting president Joe Biden in an act he deemed "a necessary retaliation" for his own impeachment. On April 5, 2023, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy announced a formal investigation into the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin under Biden's tenure as Vice President. Articles of impeachment were filed on May 3, 2023, and the House of Representatives voted on a partisan line to impeach the president for high crimes and misdermeanors and bribery, with only 8 Republican dissenting and 3 voting present. The articles were sent to the Senate the following week, where a motion to limit witnesses was introduced was failed. After a brief trial, the Senate failed to convict the President on a 50-50 vote, with senators Mitt Romney and Susan Collins voting to acquit Biden. The impeachment trial, which polling showed was largely unpopular with the American public, and was used extensively in campaign ads by the Harris campaign.

Abortion
Days after the 2022 midterm elections, the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on a 6-3 basis that states which sought to limit abortions could do so after 12 weeks of gestation, half that of the 24 week period dictated in Roe, further eroding the precedent established in Roe v. Wade. This ruling was the catalyst for a new wave of women's rights marches, both in the U.S. and around the world. The Harris campaign capitalized on the frustration of the marchers, promising to appoint justices to the supreme court who would rule to restore Roe and to rule favorably in all abortion-related cases.

COVID-19
Although initial vaccination efforts under Biden saw great successes, administering more than 200 million vaccines in the first 100 days of his presidency, the news that Johnson and Johnson would temporarily be revoking the use of their vaccines for younger patients due to a rare blood clotting symptom caused vaccinations rates to suddenly plummet. The country would not reach herd as experts hoped it would, and vaccination rates varied dramatically by region, with rural regions having much lower vaccination rates than those of cities and suburbs. As a result, the country witnessed a spike in COVID-19 cases every few months, with some states periodically closing and reopening public services and enforcing mask mandates with the hope of stopping the spread of new strains which were increasingly easier-to-spread and deadlier. Debates ranged over whether the federal government was to continue supplying aid to states afflicted by the pandemic.

Conspiracy Theories
 

Electoral results
The numbers in the table are the results certified by each state, detailed in the table of the results by state further below.