2024 United States Presidential Election (Dark Brandon)

	‹ 2020 2028 ›
2024 Republican Party presidential primaries
January to June 2024
	2,467 delegates (2,363 pledged and 104 unpledged) to the Republican National Convention 1,234 votes needed to win
	Nominee before election; Donald Trump; 2020 Republican Nominee; Donald Trump; 2024

	‹ 2020 2028 ›
2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries
February to June 2024
	3,774 delegates to the Democratic National Convention 1,888 delegates needed to win
	Nominee before election; Joe Biden; 2020 Democratic Nominee; Kamala Harris; 2024

	‹ 2020 2028 ›
2024 United States presidential election
November 5, 2024
Turnout	68.3% 1.7pp
	538 members of the electoral college 270 electoral votes needed to win
	President before election; Joe Biden; Democratic Elected President; Kamala Harris; Democratic

The 2024 United States presidential election was the 60th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. The Democratic ticket of incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz defeated the Republican ticket of former President Donald Trump and Ohio Senator J. D. Vance. Harris became the first woman and first Asian-American to be elected to the presidency. This was the first election in American history in which the nominee of a major party was either under criminal indictment or awaiting sentencing for conviction of a crime at the time of the election. This was also the last presidential election before the admissions of the District of Columbia (officially the Douglass Commonwealth) and Puerto Rico as states in 2025. The election saw the highest voter turnout by percentage since 1952, exceeding the record turnout marked by the 2020 election just four years earlier. Harris received more than 83 million votes, the most votes ever cast for a candidate in a U.S. presidential election.

Incumbent president Joe Biden, a member of the Democratic Party, initially ran for re-election and became the party's presumptive nominee on March 12. However, following what was widely viewed as a poor performance in the June 2024 presidential debate and amid increasing age and health concerns from within his party, he withdrew from the race on social media on July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who launched her presidential campaign the same day. She secured enough delegate endorsements to become the new presumptive nominee a day later. Biden's withdrawal from the race made him the first eligible president since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 not to stand for re-election.

The 2024 Republican primary was originally expected to be competitive after Donald Trump was blamed by numerous party officials for the Republican Party's underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterm elections. However, Donald Trump swept his main opponents, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Michigan, and South Carolina, and secured the Republican nomination after winning every state on Super Tuesday, save for Vermont.

The central issues of the campaign included the state of the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with inflation and the cost-of-living still higher than normal; access and the right to abortion after the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in Dobbs overturning its 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which had previously established a constitutional right to abortion; threats to democracy, including Donald Trump's denial of Biden's victory in the 2020 election, and his role in attempting to overturn the election on and before the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021; LGBT rights, including those relating to transgender persons and their access to gender-affirming care; and Donald Trump's multiple criminal convictions for falsifying business records, as well as ongoing indictments for election interference in Georgia, attempting to defraud the United States, and for illegally keeping classified documents after leaving office in 2021.

Harris ultimately received the majority in the Electoral College with 319 electoral votes, while Trump received 219. Harris won the popular vote by approximately 5.6%, the largest margin of victory for a Democrat against Donald Trump to date, which translated to a margin of over 9 million votes. Harris held onto every state won by her former running mate Joe Biden in 2020, and picked up the additional electoral votes of North Carolina. Harris' victory in North Carolina was the first for a Democrat since 2008. Despite losing in the popular vote by the largest margin of his three campaigns for President, Donald Trump still won three states previously carried by Barack Obama twice in 2008 and 2012: Iowa, Ohio, and Florida.

Just as in 2020, before, during, and after Election Day, Trump and numerous other Republicans attempted to subvert the election and overturn the results, falsely alleging widespread voter fraud and trying to influence the vote-counting process in swing states. Democratic and Republican officials at the federal level and in each of the 50 states found no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in the election. The Trump campaign and its allies, including Republican members of Congress, continued to engage in numerous attempts to overturn the results of the election by filing dozens lawsuits in several states (all of which were withdrawn or dismissed). Unlike the 2020 election, Harris' victories in the most crucial swing states that put her over 270 electoral votes were well above the threshold for a recount. Just as in 2021, massive protests were held in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2025, but the security at and around the U.S. Capitol Building was much stronger compared to four years prior. No protesters were able to breach the security perimeter around the Capitol. House Republicans once again attempted to object to the results in multiple states, but under the amended sections of the Electoral Count Act passed in late 2022, at least 1/5th of both chambers were required to sustain an objection and put it to a vote. While the objections achieved the support of over 100 House Republicans, it did not get the signatures of the 20 senators required. Harris and Walz were certified as the winners of the election in the mid-afternoon of January 6, 2025. Trump still refused to concede defeat, as he did in 2020.

Background[]

Article Two of the United States Constitution states that for a person to serve as president, the individual must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be at least 35 years old, and have been a United States resident for at least 14 years. Candidates for the presidency typically seek the nomination of one of the various political parties in the United States. Each party develops a method (such as a primary election) to choose the candidate the party deems best suited to run for the position. Primary elections are usually indirect elections where voters cast ballots for a slate of party delegates pledged to a particular candidate. The party's delegates then officially nominate a candidate to run on the party's behalf. The presidential nominee typically chooses a vice presidential running mate to form that party's ticket, which is then ratified by the delegates at the party's convention (except for the Libertarian Party, which nominates its vice-presidential candidate by delegate vote regardless of the presidential nominee's preference). The general election in November is also an indirect election, in which voters cast ballots for a slate of members of the Electoral College; these electors then directly elect the president and vice president. If no candidate receives the minimum 270 electoral votes needed to win the election, the United States House of Representatives will select the president from among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes, and the United States Senate will select the vice president from among the candidates who received the two highest totals.

Two states used ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the 2024 election, those states being Maine and Alaska. Harris won three out of the four electoral votes of state of Maine with an outright majority of votes, and Trump won Alaska with a majority of votes. However, no candidate received a majority of votes in Maine's 2nd congressional district, which triggered an instant-runoff. Trump won the ensuing count and one electoral vote in Maine, as a result. On December 16, 2024, pledged electors for each candidate, known collectively as the United States Electoral College, gathered in their states' capitols to cast their official votes. Pursuant to the processes laid out by the Electoral Count Act of 1887, certificates of ascertainment listing the names of the electors and separate certificates recording their votes are distributed to various officials across the branches of government. The newly elected Congress, with Vice President Harris in her role as Senate President presiding, met in a joint session to formally open the certificates and count the votes on January 6, 2025.

Simultaneous Elections[]

The presidential election occurred simultaneously with elections to the Senate and elections to the House of Representatives. Gubernatorial and legislative elections were also held in several states. Democrats retook control of the House of Representatives and kept control of the Senate.

Nominations[]

Democratic Party[]

With an incumbent president running for re-election against token opposition, the race for the Democratic nomination was largely uneventful. The nomination process consisted of primaries and caucuses, held by the 50 states, as well as Guam, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Democrats Abroad. Biden faced only two major challengers: Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips, a representative from Minnesota. They both stayed in the race through Super Tuesday, until Biden defeated them in every state primary.

No debates were held for the 2024 Democratic primaries. Despite many media outlets criticizing Democrats' refusal to hold them, no party of the incumbent president has ever held primary debates, so the absence of debates in the 2024 Democratic primary was no anomaly.

In 2022, the Democratic Party modified its primary schedule to remove Iowa and New Hampshire as the first two states in place of South Carolina. In the state of Iowa, the caucus was held before any other state, but the Democratic Party did not report the results until much later in the primary process, as part of a deal with the Democratic National Committee.

In the state of New Hampshire, which has a statute requiring it to be the first primary in the nation, and authorizes the state Secretary of State to take all necessary action to protect that status, Joe Biden did not appear on the ballot, meaning that Biden had to run as a write-in candidate. Biden won the New Hampshire Primary despite this roadblock, with his supporters required to physically write his name on their ballot to cast a vote for Biden. However, Dean Phillips was able to cross the necessary threshold of 15% to earn delegates in the Granite State, earning 4 out of 23 pledged delegates to the national convention. New Hampshire was the only state in which Dean earned more than 15% of the vote, and thus, it was the only state to award him delegates.

Biden swept every state on Super Tuesday, while Dean failed to reach 15% in any state, meaning that Biden earned a unanimous share of the delegates. Dean would drop out of the race on the night of Super Tuesday, cementing Biden's status as presumptive nominee.

On July 21, Biden dropped out of the race and was replaced by Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.

Candidate		Most recent position	State	Campaign announced	Pledged delegates	Popular vote	Contests won	Running mate
Joe Biden		46th President of the United States (2021-2025)	Delaware	April 25, 2023	3,770	18,398,621 (86.2%)	57, (AL, AK, AZ, AR, AS, CA, CT, CO, DA, DE, DC, FL, GA, GU, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MO, MP, MT, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, PR, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VI, VT, WA, WV, WI, WY)	Kamala Harris

Withdrew during the primaries[]

Candidate		Most recent position	State	Campaign announced	Campaign suspended	Delegates won	Popular vote	Contests won
Dean Phillips		U.S. Representative from MN-03 (2019–2025)	Minnesota	October 26, 2023	March 6, 2024	4	1,771,561 (8.3%)	0
Marianne Williamson		Author Founder of Project Angel Food	California	March 4, 2023	March 6, 2024	0	132,867 (0.62%)	0

white	white
2024 Democratic Party ticket
for President	for Vice President

49th Vice President of the United States (2021–2025)	41st Governor of Minnesota (2019-2025)

Republican Party[]

After Republicans suffered a disappointing midterm election result, having failed to take back control of the Senate and barely taken back the House of Representatives, many conservatives blamed Trump for some of their most stinging defeats. Trump-endorsed candidates for Senate such as Herschel Walker in Georgia, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Blake Masters in Arizona, and Adam Laxalt in Nevada all lost races considered to be winnable in close swing states barely won by Joe Biden just two years prior. Trump was perceived as being vulnerable to a primary challenge from Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who won his bid for re-election by 19 percentage points in state Trump had only won by 3 percentage points just two years earlier.

However, as the campaign moved into spring of 2023, DeSantis was plagued by a series of unforced errors, and fell behind in the polls after Donald Trump's indictment by a grand jury in New York. After the first series of debates, DeSantis' support in the polls completely collapsed, leaving a door open for other candidates other than Trump to take away his support. However, as the campaign went into the fall, Haley began rapidly rising in the polls amongst traditional Republican voters with stellar performances in the debates.

In the Iowa Caucus, a state Trump had lost to Ted Cruz in 2016, Trump won by 30 percentage points, with DeSantis coming in 2nd place, and Haley in a close 3rd. DeSantis and Ramaswamy dropped out of the race 6 days later. Trump then won the New Hampshire primary by 11 percentage points, but Haley finished in a strong 2nd. Trump continued his sweep with comfortable victories in Nevada and South Carolina, followed by a landslide victory in Michigan.

On Super Tuesday, Donald Trump won every primary contest except for Vermont, which resulted in Haley withdrawing from the race. Trump became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party one week later, when he secured enough delegates to ensure his nomination at the national convention.

Donald Trump and J. D. Vance were formally nominated at the Republican National Convention for President and Vice President of the United States on July 15 and 16.

Nominee[]

Candidate		Most recent position	State	Campaign announced	Pledged delegates	Popular vote	Contests won	Running mate
Donald Trump		45th President of the United States (2017–2021)	Florida	November 15, 2022	2,556	26,904,076,(70.4%)	56, (AL, AK, AZ, AR, AS, CA, CT, CO, DE, DC, FL, GA, GU, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MO, MP, MT, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, PR, RI, RO, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VI, VT, WA, WV, WI, WY)	J. D. Vance

Withdrew during the primaries[]

Candidate	Most recent position	State	Campaign announced	Campaign suspended	Delegates won	Popular vote	Contests won
Nikki Haley	U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2017–2018)	South Carolina	February 14, 2023	March 6, 2024		5,961,698 (15.6%)	DC. VT
Ron DeSantis	Governor of Florida (2019–2027)	Florida	May 24, 2023	January 21, 2024 endorsed Trump	33	3,974,465 (10.4%)	0
Vivek Ramaswamy	Executive chairman of Strive Asset Management (2022–present)	Ohio	February 21, 2023	January 15. 2024 endorsed Trump	3	71,673,(0.38%)	0
Chris Christie	55th Governor of New Jersey (2010–2018)	New Jersey	June 6, 2023	January 10. 2024	1	15,286 (0.04%)	0

Withdrew before the primaries[]

Candidate	Experience	State	Campaign announced	Campaign suspended
Tim Scott	United States Senator from South Carolina (2013-present)	South Carolina	May 22, 2023	November 12, 2023 endorsed Trump
Mike Pence	48th Vice President of the United States (2017-2021)	Indiana	June 5, 2023	October 28, 2023
Doug Burgum	Governor of North Dakota (2017–2029)	North Dakota	June 7, 2023	January 31, 2024 (endorsed Haley, then Trump as presumptive nominee)
Asa Hutchinson	Governor of Arkansas (2015–2023), Under Secretary of Homeland Security (2003–2005), Administrator of Drug Enforcement (2001–2003)	Arkansas	April 6, 2023	January 16, 2024 endorsed Haley
Larry Elder	*Host of The Larry Elder Show* (1993–2022)**, Candidate for Governor of California in 2021	California	May 1, 2023	January 10, 2024 (endorsed Trump)
Francis Suarez	43rd Mayor of Miami (2017–2025)	Florida	June 22, 2023	December 10, 2023 endorsed Trump

white	white
2024 Republican Party ticket
for President	for Vice President

45th President of the United States (2017–2021)	U.S. senator from Ohio (2023-Present)

Green Party[]

The Green Party nominated political activist and former Harvard philosophy professor Cornel West as its presidential nominee, and nominated Randy Toler, the former co-chair of the Florida Green Party, as its vice-presidential nominee.

white	white
2024 Green Party ticket
for President	for Vice President

Philosopher, political activist, and academic	Green Party co-founder, Co-chair of the Florida Green Party

Libertarian Party[]

The Libertarian Party nominated Founder and President of the Future of Freedom Foundation Jacob Hornberger as its presidential nominee, and nominated Chase Oliver, who was the Libertarian nominee for Senate in Georgia in 2022, as its vice-presidential nominee.

white	white
2024 Libertarian Party ticket
for President	for Vice President

Nominee for U.S. Senator from Georgia in 2022	Nominee for U.S. Senator from Georgia in 2022

General Election[]

Issues[]

Trump's Criminality[]

Donald-Trump-Mugshot — Donald Trump's mugshot

Trump was indicted and convicted of multiple state charges in Manhattan, New York before the 2024 general election. The first case was in Manhattan, where Trump was tried and convicted in May 2024 of falsifying business records with the intent to commit another crime. Because Trump was a first time offender, he was sentenced to only 6 months of house arrest and 5 years probation. In Georgia, Trump was tried and convicted in mid-2024 on RICO charges relating to a conspiracy to commit election interference and make false statements relating to "fake electors." In mid-2024, Trump was also tried and convicted of violating the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act in taking, holding, and refusing to return sensitive classified documents. Federal prosecutors never sought charges for Trump of aiding and abetting an insurrection on January 6th, as the case was deemed "not having a sufficiently high probability of conviction." All three of Donald Trump's trials were the most watched criminal trials in American history, even when adjusted for population growth, with ratings topping all other blockbuster trials preceding them, including the infamous murder trial of O.J. Simpson in 1995, which garnered 150 million viewers for the verdict. The first guilty verdict of Trump resulted in a massive series of protests by right-wing activists in major metropolitan areas and exurban areas. While most of the initial protests did not end in violence, Trump's sentencing to multiple years in federal prison for his second trial came just before the Democratic National Convention. Steve Bannon, a former Trump strategist, and host of Steve Bannon's War Room, along with Michael Flynn and his allies with the "Proud Boys, and members of the Oath Keepers, and groups that included the Three Percenters and United Citizens' Alarm, organized and planned a rally and march called "Stop The Steal 2.0 - Occupy Chicago" to occur during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. In large part due to the presence of para-military right-wing militia members, and the presence of large counter-protests from Black Lives Matter and Antifa raising the temperature, the demonstrations quickly went out of control. Starting on August 19, Chicago experienced a multiple-day period of riots and widespread violence, initially stoked by members of the right-wing militia, which resulted in a "domino effect" that spread the violence beyond the protests themselves; street gangs and criminals piggybacked off the violence and began to loot and destroying property across the city of Chicago. While the Democratic Convention was able to continue without delay, the protests gained massive attention across the national media. Many liberals later referred to the August 2024 Chicago riots as the "Bannon Riots." According to a book published after the 2024 election, Bannon had always intended for the rallies to turn violent in order to evoke images of the 1968 riots in Chicago that also occurred during a Democratic convention. Democrats mainly blamed Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and extreme right-wing militia groups for the riots, while Republicans blamed "leftist Chicago thugs" for the riots. Many conservatives who used the term "Chicago thugs" were criticized for invoking dog-whistle racism, implying that black people were primarily responsible, and not the white pro-Trump rally-goers.

In total, Trump was sentenced to over 10 years in prison. On the day of the 2024 election, all three cases had concluded, but were pending appeal, meaning that Trump was still able to travel the country and campaign. However, he was often limited by required appearances in court as the criminal defendant. An average of polls taken after the verdict showed that roughly 55% of Americans believed Trump was guilty of the crimes, while roughly 40% believed he was not. Nearly all republican voters still supported Donald Trump after the verdict, but his conviction completely depleted his popularity with independent voters. As Nate Cohn of the New York Times said after the election, "We'll never truly know whether Trump had a chance of winning the election even without the conviction, but we know two things for sure: First, Biden would not have won Texas if not for Trump's conviction. Second, Trump's conviction was absolutely the event that sealed Trump's fate."

The Economy[]

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States, along with nearly every developed country, saw huge increases in inflation. This is mostly due to disproportionately low supply in both goods and labor, along with high demand, forcing prices up. Many conservatives also blamed Biden and congressional Democrats' $1.9 trillion stimulus package, among other so-called "excess spending" for worsening inflation. On the other hand, Democrats argued that without the stimulus, inflation would have happened anyway, but would have been coupled with higher unemployment, resulting in stagflation.

Inflation peaked in the summer of 2022, long before the 2024 election, but in order to tame the inflation, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to the highest levels since the mid-2000s. With interest rates higher, many lenders slowed their activity, and many vulnerable parts of the financial sector were left exposed, including regional banks such as the Silicon Valley Bank. The economy dipped into a mild recession in late 2023, hurting Biden's popularity, but the labor market remained stable, and by summer of 2024, when the housing market reached peak activity, positive GDP growth returned.

On Election Day, Biden and Trump were statistically tied with voter on the issue of the economy. Biden's win was attributed to his ability to keep Trump from overtaking him on economic issues, and instead focusing on abortion, democracy, and Trump's criminal charges and conviction.

Abortion[]

Legal abortion access was a leading topic, if not the most, of the campaign. It was the first presidential election to be held in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, in which the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and permitted U.S. states to fully ban abortion. The Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs was one of the most historically unpopular Supreme Court decisions in modern history, polling only more favorably than the court's decision in Citizen's United.

In 2022, six states held elections for ballot measures relating to the legality of abortion, and the pro-abortion side was victorious in every case, including in states easily won by President Trump. By the summer of 2023, which marked the conclusion of many states' legislative sessions, a large majority of Republican-controlled states had passed near-total bans on abortion, rendering it "largely illegal" throughout much of the United States. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, there are 15 states that have de jure early stage bans on abortion without exceptions for rape or incest: all Republican-controlled: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin. In states with abortion restrictions granting de jure exceptions, it was reported that "very few exceptions to these new abortion bans have been granted" and that patients who had been raped or otherwise qualified were being turned away, citing "ambiguous laws and the threat of criminal penalties make them unwilling to test the rules."

Democrats are predominantly supportive of abortion rights before fetal viability, seeing it as a part of a right to privacy and a matter of personal autonomy. Every state controlled by Democrats has legalized abortion at least up to the point of fetal viability, which is the point in a pregnancy when the fetus has a reasonable probability of surviving outside the womb - typically considered to be around 24 weeks gestation. Numerous blue states have recently passed constitutional amendments codifying a right to "reproductive freedom," including California, Vermont, and Michigan in the 2022 midterms.

Opinion polls conducted after the Dobbs decision showed that at least 3/5ths of American voters believed that abortion should be always or mostly legal, making the issue a big liability for Republicans. Donald Trump mostly avoided the issue of abortion when possible, focusing more on issues that favored him in the polls, but he vaguely supported bans on abortion "at some level." However, due to the fact that Donald Trump was responsible for appointing three of the five Supreme Court justices who voted for the Dobbs decision, Biden was able to use the issue against Trump, especially in swing states with strict abortion bans in place during the election, including Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas, as well as in states that had recently seen abortion bans repealed or permanently struck down by a state Supreme Court ruling, such as Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. While Biden did not win the state of Ohio, he held Trump to a 6-point margin of victory, the narrowest margin of all three of his campaigns. Many political analysts have argued that this helped incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown narrowly win re-election. Joe Biden continued his support for legal abortion nationwide up until the point of fetal viability, the same standard set out by the Roe v Wade decision.

Democratic Backsliding[]

Jan6photo1 — A mob of Trump supporters attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021

Trump did not concede defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, citing unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, and continued to deny the results. Republican officials in the Trump administration and in Congress supported those attempts to overturn the election.

In the aftermath of the January 6 United States Capitol attack, FBI director Christopher A. Wray testified that far-right domestic terrorism "has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now, and it's not going away anytime soon." Ali Alexander, who organized one of the many rallies preceding the U.S. Capitol attack, stated in August 2022 that he would be returning to the Capitol building in 2025 "for whatever the Congress certifies."

Voluminous public polling showed that large majorities of Americans belonging to both political parties believe that democracy in the United States is at risk. Voters often cite different sources of threats to democracy depending on ideology, with liberals tending to believe that conservatives are threatening the country with autocratic tendencies and their attempts to overturn the 2020 election, while many conservatives believe that Democrats have cheated in elections, attempted and are still attempting to remove former President Trump from holding public office by any means necessary including impeachment and indictment, and that liberals are undermining Judeo-Christian values, which many conservatives believe to be a core part of American democracy. Voters of both parties tend to agree that the influence of money in politics, the potential for political violence, and general corruption of public officials are also aggravating factors threatening the health of American democracy.

Harris attacked Trump and "MAGA Republicans" for attempts to overturn the election, while Trump attacked Biden as a threat to democracy for being an "illegitimate candidate," having not won a primary election by Democratic voters.

Debates[]

From 1976-2020, every presidential election featured at least one televised debate between the nominees of the major parties. From 1976-1984, such debates were held by the League of Women voters, but from 1988-2020, they were held by the Commission on Presidential Debates. However, in April 2022, the Republican National Committee withdrew from the commission, citing grievances from the 2020 debates, including its selection of Steve Scully of C-SPAN as the moderator of the town hall debate, which was canceled due to Donald Trump's infection with COVID-19.

The DNC and the RNC were not able to come to any agreement for holding presidential debates, and therefore, it was nearly impossible to ever be scheduled during the 2024 election cycle. On the 27th of June, 2024, incumbent President Biden and former President Trump engaged in a debate hosted by CNN. Biden performed, in the eyes of most voters, horribly.

Both candidates participated in multiple televised town hall events sponsored and hosted by major networks, including CNN and ABC. The town halls were similar to what occurred in 2020 after Donald Trump's infection with COVID-19 resulted in the cancellation of the second presidential debate, when both candidates spoke at dueling town hall debates, answering questions from undecided voters.

After Biden dropped out of the Presidential race and his Vice President, Kamala Harris, ascended to the candidacy, Trump openly refused to debate her, saying he would not participate in the ABC hosted debate scheduled for September 10th. True to his word, Trump did not show up, instead rallying in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Harris still used the time as an interview, testing her ability in front of the press as MAGA Republicans proclaimed she'd fail miserably.

Donald Trump also participated in an event hosted by Fox News, but Vice President Harris refused to participate in the same event offered a few days later. While both Harris and President Biden made indirect jabs at Fox for its lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, he did not directly attack the network for its reputation as a conservative network. Similarly, Joe Biden attended a town hall hosted by MSNBC, which Donald Trump refused to attend, attacking "radical leftist fake news M$DNC" on social media.

Tim Walz and J.D Vance did, however, debate once in an event hosted by Fox News after the news agency promised to be fair. The debate was chaotic and unruly, with Fox not keeping to its word. Walz later claimed he felt that standing on the stage with Vance felt like "an indignity" and that Vance gave him "a right headache". Opinion polls were quite tight on the race, as Fox News had framed the questions in making Vance look better, though Walz did get a slight lead as he butchered Vance in it. An MSNBC reporter described it as a "bloodbath".

Most opinion polls showed that the town hall events did not have any major impact on voter opinion or any two-way polls between Harris and Trump.

Many political commentators bemoaned the lack of an adequate amount of Presidential Debates, with one notable New York Times columnist calling it "the continuing degradation of this country's sad political discourse."

13 Keys To the White House[]

The 13 Keys to the White House is a prediction system for determining the outcome of presidential elections in the United States. It was developed by American historian Allan Lichtman and Russian geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981, adapting prediction methods that Keilis-Borok designed for earthquake prediction.

The system is a thirteen-point checklist that assesses the situation of the country and political system ahead of a presidential election: when five or fewer items on the checklist are false, the incumbent party nominee is predicted to win the election, but when six or more items on the checklist are false, the challenging party nominee is predicted to defeat the incumbent party nominee in the election.

Some of the items on the checklist involve qualitative judgment, and therefore the reliability of this system relies heavily on the knowledge and analytical skill of whoever attempts to apply it. Using the system, Lichtman has correctly predicted the outcomes of every presidential election since 1984. Here is the result of the 13 Keys in 2024, in which Lichtman correctly predicted that Vice President Harris would defeat Donald Trump.

#	Key	True/False
1	Midterm gains: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.	False
2	No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination (nominee gets 2/3rds of delegates on 1st ballot).	True
3	Incumbent seeking re-election: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.	False
4	No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.	True
5	Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.	True
6	Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.	True
7	Major policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.	True
8	No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.	True
9	No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.	True
10	No foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.	False
11	Major foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.	True
12	Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.	False
13	Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.	True
KAMALA HARRIS PREDICTED TO WIN		4 FALSE

Results[]

**Electoral results**
Presidential Candidate	Party	Home State	Popular Vote		Electoral vote	Running mate
Presidential Candidate	Party	Home State	Count	Percentage	Electoral vote	Vice-presidential candidate	Home state	Electoral vote
Kamala Harris	Democratic	California	83,831,847	50.9%	319	Tim Walz	Minnesota	319
Donald Trump	Republican	Florida	74,608,696	45.3%	219	J. D. Vance	Ohio	219
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.	Independent	California	4,776,214	2.9%	0	Nicole Shanahan	California	0
Chase Oliver	Libertarian	Georgia	658,796	0.4%	0	Mike ter Maat	Virginia	0
Jill Stein	Green	Massachusetts	494,097	0.3%	0			0
Other			329,398	0.2%	-	Other		-
Total			164,699,048	100%	538			538
Needed to win					270			270

Statistics[]

Close states[]

States where the margin of victory was under 1% (16 electoral votes; all won by Harris):

North Carolina, 0.2% - 16 electoral votes

States where the margin of victory was between 1% and 5% (117 electoral votes; 77 won by Harris, 40 by Trump):

Georgia, 1.2% – 16 electoral votes
Wisconsin, 1.7% – 10 electoral votes
Texas, 1.8% - 40 electoral votes
Arizona, 2.3% – 11 electoral votes (tipping-point state)
Nevada, 2.6% – 6 electoral votes
Pennsylvania, 2.9% – 19 electoral votes
Michigan, 4.1% - 15 electoral votes

States/districts where the margin of victory was between 5% and 10% (72 electoral votes; 15 won by Harris, 57 by Trump):

Maine's 2nd Congressional District, 5.4% - 1 electoral vote
Ohio, 8.1% – 17 electoral votes
Iowa, 8.2% – 6 electoral votes
Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, 7.2% – 1 electoral vote
Minnesota, 8.2% – 10 electoral votes
New Hampshire, 8.6% – 4 electoral votes
Florida, 9.7% – 30 electoral votes
Alaska, 9.8% – 3 electoral votes

Blue denotes states or congressional districts won by Democrat Joe Biden; red denotes those won by Republican Donald Trump.

Harris' Path to Victory[]

In the 2020 election, eight states were decided by a margin of less than 5% of the votes cast. Six were carried by Joe Biden: Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia. Two were carried by Donald Trump: North Carolina and Florida.

No state previously won by Biden with a margin of more than 5% in 2020 was in play during the 2024 election. Of the states Biden won by close margins in 2020, Harris won all but one of them by over 1% of the vote, with the exception of Georgia, which she won by 0.9%. Harris's strength among suburban voters in metro areas such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Reno contributed to her larger margins of victory, as well as renewed strength with minority voters.

Among the states won by Trump by small margins in 2020, Harris was able to carry North Carolina by a narrow margin of 0.2%, but lost Florida by a larger margin than in 2020. Many Democrats, after suffering a 20-point loss to Ron DeSantis in the 2022 Florida gubernatorial election, had written Florida off as a swing state. Florida's rightward turn has been attributed to Republican gains among Cuban American Latinos and an influx of conservative-leaning voters in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Voter Demographics[]

Exit polls that interviewed voters after the polls showed a very similar breakdown of American voters as in the 2020 election, but with distinct changes in specific demographic groups.

In regard to race, Harris improved upon Biden's 2020 margins among all minority groups, becoming the first Democrat since Barack Obama to score over 90% of the black vote, and nearly reached 70% of the Latino vote. However, most but not all of her gains amongst minorities were offset by slippage amongst white voters.

Harris held steady with Biden's margin amongst men, but made significant gains with women.

In regard to age, Harris' margins mostly held steady compared to Joe Biden's in 2020, but she made modest gains with voters under 40.

Ideology
Demographic subgroup	Harris (D)	Trump (R)	% of total vote
Total vote	51	45	96
Liberals	89	8	25
Moderates	64	28	38
Conservatives	14	83	37
Party
Democrats	95	5	37
Republicans	6	94	36
Independents	58	32	26
Gender
Men	45	51	47
Women	59	38	53
Marital status
Married	45	51	55
Unmarried	59	37	45
Gender by marital status
Married men	43	53	29
Married women	48	48	27
Unmarried men	52	43	19
Unmarried women	65	31	25
Race/ethnicity
White	38	57	65
Black	92	6	13
Latino	69	28	15
Asian	63	34	4
Other	55	42	4
Gender by race/ethnicity
White men	35	62	34
White women	44	54	31
Black men	83	14	4
Black women	94	4	8
Latino men	60	34	6
Latino women	73	24	9
Other	59	37	8
Religion
Protestant/Other Christian	38	58	42
Catholic	52	45	25
Jewish	76	22	2
Other religion	68	27	8
None	66	28	23
White evangelical or born-again Christian
Yes	23	75	28
No	63	34	72
Age
18–24 years old	66	28	10
25–29 years old	54	41	8
30–39 years old	52	45	17
40–49 years old	55	43	15
50–64 years old	48	51	29
65 and older	48	51	21
Sexual orientation
LGBT	68	29	8
Non-LGBT	50	46	92
First time voter
Yes	65	29	14
No	50	48	86
Education
High school or less	45	53	19
Some college education	52	45	23
Associate degree	46	48	16
Bachelor's degree	53	45	27
Postgraduate degree	65	36	15
Income
Under $30,000	54	43	15
$30,000–49,999	56	42	20
$50,000–99,999	56	41	39
$100,000–199,999	41	55	20
Over $200,000	48	47	7
Union households
Yes	56	40	20
No	50	47	80
Military service
Veterans	45	53	15
Non-veterans	53	43	85
Issue regarded as most important
Threats to democracy	93	6	11
Crime¹	59	36	23
Immigration	24	72	10
Economy	15	80	29
Abortion	76	22	27
Region
East	59	37	20
Midwest	47	49	22
South	46	51	35
West	57	39	23
Area type
Urban	60	37	29
Suburban	51	45	51
Rural	41	55	19
Do you agree or disagree with the guilty verdicts in Donald Trump's criminal trials?
Agree strongly/mostly	91	6	53
Disagree strongly/mostly	4	94	42
Not sure	32	51	5
Abortion should be
Legal in all/most cases	72	24	59
Illegal in all/most cases	22	75	41
Climate change is a serious problem
Yes	66	20	72
No	14	83	27

_{¹The issue of "crime" included public safety, Donald Trump's conviction of multiple felony charges, and gun safety.}

Aftermath[]

Election Night[]

Unlike the 2016 and 2020 elections, most pre-election polling did not skew in favor of the Democratic candidate against Trump compared to the final results of the election. On the eve of the election, polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight showed Harris with a 3% lead in the popular vote, and only a 58% chance of winning the electoral college, a much different probability metric than in 2020, when the website gave her former running mate Joe Biden an 89% chance of winning. Another poll aggregator, RealClearPolitics, showed Harris with a 1% lead in the popular vote, and Trump with a lead in the electoral college. Many of the polls at both the national level and in the swing states had wide variations between pollsters, with some organizations such as Trafalgar showing Trump leading in the popular vote and in the electoral college with over 300 electoral votes, including leads in states won by Hillary Clinton, while polls like the New York Times/Sienna showed Biden leading with over 300 electoral votes. Most political pundits and analysts referred to the state of the race as a toss-up.

Kamala wins nyt headline — The front page of the New York Times on November 6, 2024, the day after the election

On election night, Harris over-performed many of the swing state polls, especially in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia, and North Carolina. By 10:30 PM, the Associated Press had called Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire for Harris. Just after 11 PM EST, when the polls closed on the West Coast, the Associated Press called the states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for Harris, putting her over 270 votes before midnight.

According to members of Kamala Harris' campaign, it became obvious to them that she was going to win the election by around 10 PM. A few minutes before most news outlets called the election, they reached out to members of the Trump campaign to ask if he would concede the election. Roughly half an hour after every major news network called the election for Harris, a statement was released by the Trump campaign stating that they were not conceding the election due to concerns about the voting process and the belief that the projections were premature.

The Harris campaign allowed for two hours to pass as the major networks continued to project more victories for Harris in various states, solidifying her win, and stamping out any conversation that calls could be reversed. While Donald Trump himself did not make a public appearance, the Trump campaign publicly refused to concede the election. By 2 AM EST, Harris had been projected to have won every state that Joe Biden had previously carried in 2020, save for Nevada, putting her at 297 electoral votes.

Just after 2 AM, nearly 3 hours after being projected the winner, and still with no concession from Donald Trump, Harris gave her victory speech to a crowd of supporters in President Biden's hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

Analysis[]

The 2024 election marked the first time since the 1988 election that an incumbent Vice President won a general election, and the first time in history that such a victory by an incumbent vice president was by a larger margin in the popular vote and/or the electoral than his or her predecessor. After 2012 became the first election since 1944 that no candidate had any military service, the 2024 election marked the fourth election in a row where this phenomenon occurred.

In losing the 2024 election, Donald Trump became only the second major-party candidate in American history to lose the popular vote three times, the only other person being William Jennings Bryan in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Trump's appearance in the general election made him the only person other than Franklin Roosevelt to have run in a general election three times in a row, and Trump became the only major-party candidate to have ever lost the popular vote three consecutive times. Trump also became the only President in American history to have lost two presidential general elections.

Donald Trump became the first Republican since Bob Dole to fail to win the popular vote of every county in any individual state. While Trump had previously won every county in Oklahoma and West Virginia during the 2016 and 2020 elections, Harris flipped Oklahoma County, OK, and she also flipped Monongalia County, WV. Harris won the popular vote of every county in the states of Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Harris's 5-point victory in the popular vote and 100 electoral vote margin in the 2024 election represented the best Democratic performance in all three general elections in which Donald Trump was the Republican nominee. With many congressional races having closely mirrored presidential elections in recent elections, Harris's win helped Democrats retake control of the House of Representatives, and helped vulnerable Senate Democrats retain their seats, and therefore, the Democrats' control of the Senate.

Shortly after the election, Donald Trump sentenced for three major areas of felony charges, amounting to over 10 years in prison. First, he was convicted and sentenced to 6 months of house arrest and 5 years of probation in Manhattan for felony charges of falsifying business records. Secondly, he was convicted and sentenced to 5 years in federal prison for violating the Espionage Act by stealing and willfully retaining and hiding classified documents - including but not limited to - nuclear secrets of foreign nations, personal information regarding French President Emmanuel Macron, and war plans for an attack on Iran. Thirdly, he was convicted and sentenced to 5 years in Georgia state prison for RICO charges and charges of conspiracy to commit election interference. The fourth case, which revolved around his actions on January 6th, were not pursued to their conclusion. While many thought the 2024 election would be Trump's last, he would run again for President in the 2028 election, losing the Republican primary, and unsuccessfully running as a third party candidate of the America First Party. He came in third place in the 2028 general election, syphoning away millions of votes from the GOP nominee, which resulted in a landslide re-election for President Harris.

After the election, campaign analysts within the Republican Party concluded that in order for the party to avoid another defeat, they would need to divorce themselves from Donald Trump's criminality and moderate on the issue of abortion. This effort would fail, as numerous Republican candidates for contested races in the 2026 midterm elections, including Trump's future 2028 running mate Marjorie Taylor Greene in the Georgia Senate race, continued to support the release of former President Trump from prison. The issue of abortion did not fall by the wayside after the 2024 elections, either. After retaking Congress, Democrats in the Senate eliminated the legislative filibuster and passed the Abortion Rights Act, legalizing abortion in all 50 states, but the law was overturned by the Supreme Court, resulting in a power struggle by President Harris and Democrats in Congress with the court, eventually resulting in a partial upholding of a second abortion law. Republicans continued to be strangled by the popularity of abortion rights and Donald Trump's extreme unpopularity among the American public, and the GOP failed to retake control of both the House and the Senate in the 2026 midterms.

Maps[]

Electoral College votes[]

The presidential electors met in the state capitol of each state and in the District of Columbia on December 16, 2020, and formalized Biden's victory, casting 319 votes for Harris/Walz and 219 votes for Trump/Vance. Just as in 2020, in swing states won by Harris, groups of self-appointed Republican "alternate electors" met on the same day to vote for Trump. These alternate slates were not signed by the governors of the states they claim to represent, did not have the backing of any state legislature, and have no legal status.

Even after the casting of the electoral votes and rejection of his lawsuits seeking to overturn the election by dozens of judges, Trump refused to concede defeat. In a speech following the Electoral College vote, Harris praised the resiliency of U.S. democratic institutions and the high election turnout (calling it "one of the most amazing demonstrations of civic duty we've ever seen in our country") and called for national unity. Harris also condemned Trump, and those who backed his efforts to subvert the election outcome.

Certification of Electoral College votes[]

The 119th United States Congress first convened on January 3, 2025, and was scheduled to count and certify the Electoral College votes on January 6, 2025. There were 228 Democrats and 207 Republicans in the House; there were 48 Democrats, 50 Republicans, and two independents in the Senate. Several Republican members of the House and Senate said they would raise objections to the reported count in several states. Under the Electoral Count Act, which was amended in late 2022 in response to the certification on January 6, 2021, if one-fifth of each body objects, the two houses must meet separately to discuss whether to accept the certified state vote.

January 6, 2024 rally for Trump — Pro-Trump protesters rally at the "Save Trump, Save America" rally on January 6, 2025. Unlike four years prior, they were unable to breach the Capitol security perimeter.

As vice president, Kamala Harris was due to preside over the January 6, 2025, congressional session to count the electoral votes, which is normally a non-controversial, ceremonial event. Due to the amendment to the Electoral Count Act, there was no question about Harris being able to unilaterally count the votes.

Just as in 2020, Trump called for his supporters to stage a massive protest in Washington, D.C. on January 6 to argue against certification of the electoral vote. Having been through the attacks in 2021, the D.C. Police and National Guard undertook months of preparation for the certification of the electoral votes. Starting around the New Year, the National Guard established a security perimeter around the Capitol spanning multiple city blocks, with numerous checkpoints for vehicles and personnel attempting to enter. Starting on January 3, the grounds of the Capitol were ordered by newly inaugurated Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries and the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms to be locked down to all visitors and barricaded with multiple layers of temporary walls and armed guards. These actions mounted criticism from Republicans such as Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, no changes were made to the security preparations. On January 6, Trump staged another large rally, and after the conclusion of Trump's speech, his supporters began marching to the Capitol as they had done four years before. While some sections of the security line were forced to resort to crowd control measures such as tear gas, there were no major attempts to break through the security line.

While over 100 House republicans objected to the counting of electoral votes in multiple states, enough to achieve the 1/5th threshold, the objections did not garner the support of 20 senators. The objections were not sustained, thus resulting in the certification of Harris and Walz as being re-elected to the Presidency and the Vice Presidency by mid-afternoon.

Post-Certification[]

Harris-2025-sworn-in — Harris sworn in as the 47th President of the United States; January 20, 2025

Donald Trump has never conceded his defeat in the 2024 election, maintaining that Harris cheated. A narrow majority of Republicans believe that President Harris did not fairly win either of her elections to the Presidency. Harris and Walz were inaugurated on January 20, 2025.

2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries
‹ 2020 2028 ›
February to June 2024

Nominee	Joe Biden	Dean Phillips
Home state	Delaware	Minnesota
Electoral vote	3,905	4
States carried	50 + DC + 5 territories + D.A.	0
Popular vote	14,465,519	529,486
Percentage	87.1%	3.2%


3,774 delegates to the Democratic National Convention 1,888 delegates needed to win
Nominee before election Joe Biden 2020 Democratic Nominee Kamala Harris 2024