The 2024 United States presidential election was the 60th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024.[3] The Republican Party's ticket—Donald Trump, who was the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and JD Vance, the junior U.S. senator from Ohio—defeated the Democratic Party's ticket—Kamala Harris, the incumbent U.S. vice president, and Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota.[4][5] Trump and Vance are scheduled to be inaugurated as the 47th president and the 50th vice president on January 20, 2025, after their formal election by the Electoral College.[6][7]
The incumbent president, Joe Biden of the Democratic Party, initially ran for re-election with Harris as the party's presumptive nominee,[8] facing little opposition;[9] however, what was broadly considered a poor debate performance in June 2024 intensified concerns about his age and health, and led to calls within his party for him to leave the race.[10] After initially declining to do so, Biden withdrew on July 21, becoming the first eligible incumbent president to withdraw since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968.[11] Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris,[12] who was voted the party's nominee by the delegates on August 5, 2024. Harris selected Walz as her running mate.[13][14]
Trump, who had lost in 2020 to Biden, ran for re-election again.[15] He was nominated during the 2024 Republican National Convention along with his running mate, Vance, after winning the Republican primaries. The Trump campaign was noted for making many false and misleading statements, including the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump,[16][17][18][19] engaging in anti-immigrant fearmongering,[a] and promoting conspiracy theories.[20][21] His speeches were widely described as marked by authoritarian and dehumanizing rhetoric toward his political opponents.[b] His campaign and populist political movement were characterized by several historians and former Trump administration officials as featuring parallels to fascism.[c]
In May 2024, Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime when he was found guilty on multiple felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments made to the pornographic actress Stormy Daniels.[22] He was previously found liable for sex abuse against E. Jean Carroll and for business fraud in New York. He remains under multiple indictments for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and his election racketeering prosecution in Georgia. Trump survived two assassination attempts in the four months before the election: the first at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the second at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.[23][24]
According to polls, the most important issues for voters were the economy,[25] healthcare,[26] democracy,[27][28] foreign policy (notably U.S. support for Israel and for Ukraine),[29] violent crime,[30] immigration,[31][32] gun policy,[30] abortion,[33][34][35] racial and ethnic inequality,[30] and climate change.[30][36][37] Education and LGBTQ rights were also prominent issues in the campaign.[38][39] Polled voters consistently cited the economy as being the single most important issue in the election.[25][30] According to Pew Research, immigration was the second-most important issue to Trump supporters but the least-important issue to Harris supporters.[30]
Trump achieved a decisive victory, sweeping every swing state in addition to holding on to all of the states that he won in 2020.[40][41] Trump flipped six states that had voted Democratic in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.[42] Trump won the national popular vote, making him the first Republican to do so since George W. Bush in 2004.[43] He significantly improved his vote share among almost all demographics nationwide, particularly among Hispanic voters, in a working class coalition described as the most racially diverse for a Republican presidential candidate in decades.[44][45][46] Having previously won in 2016, Trump became the second president elected to a non-consecutive second term, 132 years after Grover Cleveland defeated Benjamin Harrison in 1892; this was also the first election since 1892 in which the incumbent White House party was defeated in three consecutive elections.[47] Trump, aged 78, is also the oldest person ever to be elected U.S. president;[48] Vance, aged 40, is the first millennial to be elected vice president.[49] Harris won 226 electoral votes, the worst performance for a Democratic presidential ticket since that of Michael Dukakis in 1988.[50]
