The 2024 presidential campaign was marked by two assassination attempts, a candidate switch, divisive rhetoric and warnings about the fate of democracy. And that may have only been the beginning.
Anxiety about the outcome of the race — and when the winner will be known — hung over Election Day as Americans headed to the polls. About 244 million Americans are eligible to vote, and at least 83 million have cast their ballots already. Polling suggests the race is as close as any in modern history, with the outcome almost certain to be contested in the courts.
Vice President Kamala Harris is looking to become the first woman to lead the US. She branded her rival, former President Donald Trump, a threat to democracy and pledged to protect reproductive freedoms and lower prices for housing and health care. Yet she struggled to define herself in one of the shortest presidential campaigns, after Joe Biden stepped aside in July.
Trump is hoping to capitalize on surveys that widely show Americans trust his ability to steward the economy. He’s vowed to crack down on immigration, promising to deport millions of undocumented migrants and slash taxes. He’s also cast his political opponents as the “enemy from within” — a dark vision that was fueled by a sense of threat after a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his right ear at a July rally.
A victory would mark an extraordinary political comeback for Trump, who left office in 2021 weeks after a mob of his supporters attacked the US Capitol to reverse his electoral loss. He regained the support of Republicans, some of whom had abandoned him after the Jan. 6 Capitol assault. He was found guilty earlier this year on 34 felony counts linked to a payment to an adult film actress before the 2016 election.
Polling stations were open in more than 40 states as of 9am Eastern time, with the focus on the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. Trump planned to vote in Palm Beach, Florida later Tuesday and hold his election night rally at the convention center there. Harris, who is registered to vote in California, cast her ballot by mail. Her rally was planned for Washington’s Howard University, her alma mater.
The two candidates offered opposite visions of how to lead in what’s set to become the costliest campaign in US history. Trump promised an amplified version of his playbook-shredding first term, with its emphasis on “America First.” Some of his former White House aides have questioned his fitness for a second term, including his one-time chief of staff John Kelly, who said in the final weeks of the campaign that Trump was a “fascist.”
Harris ran an extremely careful campaign that saw her reintroduce herself to voters after her 2020 election run and as she sought to distinguish herself from Biden without criticizing the president who made her his running mate and endorsed her to replace him at the top of the ticket.
Harris has espoused a similar foreign policy doctrine to Biden, who corralled support for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia. She’s also navigated intra-party angst over Israel’s war against Hamas.
While Biden emphasized democracy in his campaign against Trump, Harris leaned on freedom as a way to encompass democracy, women’s reproductive rights and civil rights. She’s promised to expand the child tax credit and make housing more affordable.
With the Republican ticket still refusing to concede Biden won last time, anxiety is running high over the potential for a drawn-out battle and when the next president will be known.
Trump alleged even before ballot-counting began that Democrats were cheating. Both sides are primed for lawsuits over claims of voter irregularities, and it’s possible the ultimate victor might not be declared until the Electoral College meets on Dec. 17.
In 2020, The Associated Press needed four days to call the vote for Biden. Trump made little secret of his party’s plan for legal challenges should Harris win. He falsely told supporters he was leading in all the polls, urged Republican voters to make his victory “too big to rig” and said he would win Democrat-leaning states if his supporters “keep the votes honest.”
There are also 67.2 million voters who requested mail-in ballots that they haven’t yet returned. In most states, voters need to return those ballots by the time polls close or cast a vote in person — although 18 states will count mail-in ballots as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day.
In the run-up to Tuesday’s vote, Treasury yields declined and the US dollar weakened. Attention will focus on so-called Trump trades, which have recently boosted assets including the dollar that could benefit from low-tax, high-tariff policies.
The stakes couldn’t be higher globally. The election winner will inherit wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and must face down an increasingly assertive China. The night before Election Day, US intelligence agencies issued an unprecedented statement saying adversaries — with Russia as the “most active threat” — were stepping up a push to undermine confidence in the elections.
“These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials,” the agencies said.
There were worrying developments in the waning days of the race when early-voting boxes in Oregon and Washington were set on fire, destroying hundreds of ballots. Recent polling reflected the national mood, with about half of swing-state voters worried about violence surrounding the election, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll from earlier this year.
Voters also voiced fears about misinformation — which were borne out by recent deep-fakes of Harris’ running mate Tim Walz.
It was a campaign of unprecedented vitriol. The candidates — and their vice presidential picks, Walz and Republican JD Vance — spurred supporters on with dark warnings about their rivals winning control of the White House.
Trump cast America as a “garbage can for the world,” a weak nation unable to outfox its rivals and buckling under the weight of illegal immigrants. At a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden, a comedian opening for the former president called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” while another speaker referred to Harris’ “pimp handlers.”
“This election is a choice between whether we will have four more years of gross incompetence and failure or whether we will begin the four greatest years in the history of our country,” Trump said at the same event.
Harris characterized Trump as erratic and unfit to lead, casting him as out of touch — particularly when it came to reproductive rights. At her closing speech on the Ellipse in Washington, she called Trump “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.”
At the same speech, she said it was “time to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms.”
While Harris previously had the edge in several crucial state-level races, the most recent Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll released on Oct. 23 had both candidates in a dead heat across the seven swing-states.
And while Trump lost some of the polling edge he had earlier in the campaign, surveys show him gaining among Black and Hispanic voters that were key to earlier Democratic victories.
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