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![]() Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Biden/Harris, and red denotes states won by Scott/Stefanik. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The 2024 United States presidential election was the 60th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 2020. The Republican ticket, consisting of Tim Scott, the junior senator from South Carolina, and Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, defeated the Democratic ticket of incumbent president Joe Biden and incumbent vice president Kamala Harris of Delaware and California respectively, and an independent ticket consisting of lawyer and activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of Virginia and former governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura. The election saw Scott achieve the biggest win in the electoral college since former president Barack Obama's successful re-election campaign in the 2012 presidential election, with Scott attaining 323 electoral votes to Joe Biden's 215.
Joe Biden, who was first elected in 2020 over then-incumbent president Donald Trump of the Republican party, proved unpopular among the Democratic party. Despite this, no viable candidates other than Biden from inside the party appeared; the most significant challengers were author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, and Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota. Neither candidate was able to win a single state in the party's primaries. However, Biden did lose one contest to entrepreneur Jason Palmer, with said contest being the caucus for American Samoa. With this, Biden became the first incumbent president to lose a nominating contest since Jimmy Carter in 1980. None of this proved to be a significant hinderance for Biden, and he easily clinched his party's nomination.
While the Democratic Party's primaries went relatively smoothly, the Republican primaries were anything but. An initially crowded field was whittled down to four major candidates by the beginning of the party's contests: Former president Donald Trump, former Ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Floridia governor Ron DeSantis, and wealth management executive Vivek Ramaswamy. Both Ramaswamy and DeSantis suspended their campaigns after poor showings in the Iowa caucus, while Haley continued to be competitive (including winning multiple states) until she announced the suspension of her campaign in early April, leaving Trump as the presumptive nominee. While Trump was widely expected to continue to the general election, on May 4, 2024, Trump was assassinated while holding a televised rally in Owensboro, Kentucky.
Trump's death proved to be immensely impactful; the event came to be known as one of the world's most important political events of the 21st century thus far. The assassination left the party without a nominee to face Biden in November; as such, the Republican National Committee scrambled to find a new nominee. A leak from within Trump's staff revealed that he intended to pick South Carolina senator Tim Scott to be his vice presidential nominee, but was killed before being able to do so. By the beginning of the year's Republican National Convention, two main candidates had emerged as frontrunners for the nomination: Scott, by virtue of being Trump's pick for vice president, and Haley, as the best performing candidate in the primaries behind Trump. After a series of votes, the party consolidated behind Scott as their nominee, and Scott was officially nominated as the Republican nominee for president. Scott became the first person to be nominated by a major party without winning a single contest in the party's primary contests since Hubert Humphrey was nominated by the Democratic party in 1968. Prior to the convention, Scott had chosen Representative Elise Stefanik of New York as his vice presidential nominee, and she was officially nominated alongside with Scott during the convention's nominating process. Scott previously attempted to run in the party's primaries for this election, but suspended his campaign prior to the Iowa caucus.
Central issues and events of the election included abortion, especially in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, immigration and border security, the state of the economy economy, the ongoing political backlash and subsequent restricting of rights of LGBTQ+ people, Israel's invasion of Gaza which began in October 2023, Trump's assassination and subsequent impacts, Biden's competency as president, and the state of democracy in the nation. Continuing the trend began in 2016, the election proved divisive and negative, though analysts generally agreed the absence of Trump caused a more clean campaign than what would've otherwise occurred had he not been killed. The campaign was marked by multiple gaffes from Biden on the campaign trail. Biden was a highly unpopular president heading into the general election season, with his approval rating hovering at 35% in June. Concerns were raised, even before the beginning of the election, about Biden's cognitive ability and advanced age: Biden was 78 upon his initial election to the presidency, and was running for re-election in his 80s. During a campaign rally in Cleveland, Ohio in July, Biden mistakenly said that he was excited to run against Trump in the general election. Biden faced widespread criticism for the gaffe owing to Trump's assassination in May, and Scott took the lead in polling later that month.
Another gaffe occurred while Biden made a speech concerning the invasion of Gaza in late August. In the speech, Biden called for a ceasefire while simultaneously encouraing Israeli forces to remain in Gaza in order to prevent the ceasefire from being violated by Hamas, whom he remarked as still being an active threat. Biden was met with criticism from both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine supporters; the former criticized his call for a ceasefire, while the latter questioned his logic, with the widespread sentiment being that the continued deployment of Israeli forces in Gaza made the claim of wanting a "ceasefire" a lie. Additionally, multiple incidents arose where Biden did not know where he was or what he was talking about.
The Scott campaign capitalized on the Biden campaign's stumbles, with Scott's focal attacking point against Biden being his cognitive abilities. A handful of critics accused Scott of ageist sentiment; however, the tactic proved effective among the American populace, with Scott's polling ticking upward after the gaffes and subsequent reactions. Due to Biden's condition, Scott attempted to paint the campaign as being against vice president Harris rather than Biden. Harris, prior to the election season, was even more unpopular than Biden and one of the most unpopular vice presidents in American history. The Biden campaign attempted to portray Scott as a dangerous presence who would work to eradicate democracy if elected, similar to the tactic they had used against Trump four years prior. However, with Trump out of the picture, the tactic proved to be highly ineffective. Scott responded with the fact that he did not vote to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and further accused Democrats of fearmongering for political gain. Scott, as well as independent third-party candidate Kennedy, prevailed over Biden in all presidential debates according to both analysts and the public, further cementing him as the frontrunner.
Another factor was the presence of significant third-party candidate Kennedy. Initially running against Biden in the Democratic primaries before switching to an independent campaign, Kennedy was able to maintain an average of over 10% throughout the entire duration of the campaign season, with his polling averages coming within 10% of Biden for a brief period in the summer. Kennedy posed the most notable candidacy for the presidency from a candidate outside the two major parties since Ross Perot's 1992 and 1996 campaigns. The Scott campaign largely kept their focus off of Kennedy and on Biden. However, Biden's campaign heavily attacked Kennedy to the point that attack ads against Kennedy had more airtime on average than attack ads against Scott. This was seen as a major mistake on the part of Biden's campaign, with Scott attacking Biden for not recognizing what was actually popular among the American public. The excessive focus on Kennedy by the Biden campaign was considered by analysts to be one of the key reasons why Scott was able to win the election by such a margin.
Ultimately, the Biden campaign was unable to meaningfully attack Scott, while Scott's campaign was able to repeatedly damage the Biden campaign, with the Biden campaign's stumbles not helping the situation. By Election Day, it became clear that Scott was overwhelmingly likely to win the election, and all major pundits predicted a Scott win. These predictions came to fruition, and Scott scored the biggest win for a non-incumbent candidate in the Electoral College since Bill Clinton in 1992. Unlike the prior election, but similar to elections from 2016 and before, Scott was declared the winner of the election by the beginning of the morning after the election.
Scott was able to best Biden in the popular vote by a margin of approximately 4.7%, a margin comparable to that of Biden's victory margin over Trump four years prior. Scott's win primarily came from areas that went for Trump in 2016 but Biden in 2020, with Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and NE-02, all of which Biden flipped in 2020, flipped back to the Republicans in this election. Additionally, Scott became the first Republican to win Nevada since George W. Bush won the state 2004, and ended the longest-running Democratic streak for any state in the country by becoming the first Republican to win Minnesota since 1972, when Richard Nixon carried the state. Scott also came within 5% of flipping Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, and New Hampshire. Despite his large win in the Electoral College, Scott received the lowest amount of votes for a winning candidate percentage-wise since Clinton in 1992, and also got around ten million less raw votes than Biden did in 2020; both of these were attributed to Kennedy's presence in the race. Despite failing to win any states, Kennedy became the most voted-for non-major party candidate since Perot's first campaign in 1992. Overall, Scott received 323 electoral votes, while Biden received 215.
Following projections that Scott had won the election, Scott made a victory speech on the morning of November 6. Protests broke out around the country as a result of Scott's win; however, the fallout from the election was noted as being significantly less impactful than protests seen after the 2016 and 2020 elections. Ahead of the election, some of Scott's supporters, all of whom supported Trump prior to his assassination, began to allege that Democrats were preparing to engage in voter fraud. However, the claim was dropped after Scott won the election by a significant margin. Biden conceded the election at noon on November 6, congratulating Scott on his victory. The transition period came and went without any major incidents, and Scott's term started on January 20, 2025 as planned.
Background[]
Procedure[]
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. The Twenty-second Amendment forbids any person from being elected president more than twice. Major party candidates seek the nomination through a series of primary elections that select the delegates who choose the candidate at the party's national convention. This year proved to be an exception, as the candidate that would have been nominated as a result of the Republican primaries, Donald Trump, was killed before the Republican National Convention. His choice for vice president, South Carolina senator Tim Scott, was nominated by the party's delegates. Each party's national convention chooses a vice presidential running mate to form that party's ticket. The nominee for president usually picks the running mate, who is then ratified by the delegates at the party's convention.
The general election in November is 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. The presidential election occurred simultaneously alongside elections for the House of Representatives, the Senate, and various state and local-level elections.
Joe Biden's candidacy[]
Incumbent president Joe Biden, a Democrat, was eligible to run for a second term. Biden was first elected in 2020, defeating incumbent president Trump. Although he was eligible to run, a significant number of Democrats, including some within congress and high up within the party, urged him not to run. Those included Representative Carolyn Maloney, then-Representative Tim Ryan (Ryan lost his seat after an unsucseessful bid for the Senate), and former Representative Joe Cunningham. Concerns were raised about his popularity and age; he was the oldest person to assume the office at age 78 and would be 82 at the end of his first term. Had he been re-elected, he would be 86 at the end of his second term. In addition to this, polling showed the majority of Americans did not want Biden to run for re-election. However, a strong showing from the Democratic party in the 2022 midterms increased support for a potential Biden re-election bid, and Biden announced he would run for re-election on April 25, 2023.
Assassination of Donald Trump[]
On May 4, 2024, former president and presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, was assassinated while holding a televised rally in Owensboro, Kentucky. His assailant, 24 year old woman Luna Simon of Washington, was scared that Trump would get rid of democracy no matter if he won or lost. As a result, Simon believed that the only way to prevent this was to, in Simon's words, "remove him from the picture". Simon was sentenced to death for the assassination in 2028 in a series of highly publicized trials, though her sentence was later commuted to life in prison without parole.
Trump's death sent shockwaves throughout the country. In the aftermath of his death, analysts generally presented two potential scenarios for the upcoming presidential election stemming from Trump's assassination. The first was that the Republican party would fail to find a candidate to unite around, causing vote splitting. According to an article by senior political analyst for CNN, Gloria Borger, she predicted that if this scenario were to occur, it would allow Biden to cruise to an easy re-election. However, Borger also presented a second potential scenario, which would ultimately prove correct. She guessed that the Republican party would be able to coalesce behind a Republican candidate that can both please the now-distraught and leaderless Trump supporter base while also being able to appeal the voters that might've been turned off had Trump been the nominee. This would lead to both an energized Republican base and a good showing among swing voters and independent voters, which could lead to a big victory by a prospective Republican candidate. National political reporter for The New York Times, Adam Nagourney, shared a similar sentiment, releasing an article stating that Trump's asssassination could bode well for Republicans in 2024 thanks to increased turnout and sympathy from swing voters.