2024 United States presidential election facts for kids
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538 members of the Electoral College 270 electoral votes needed to win |
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 2024 electoral map, based on the results of the 2020 census
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The 2024 United States presidential election will be the 60th quadrennial presidential election, set to be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. Voters in each state and the District of Columbia will choose electors to the Electoral College, who will then elect a president and vice president for a term of four years.
The incumbent president, Joe Biden, a member of the Democratic Party, initially ran for re-election and became the party's presumptive nominee, facing little opposition. However, Biden's performance in the June 2024 presidential debate intensified concerns about his age and health, and led to calls within his party for him to leave the race. He withdrew on July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the party's nominee on August 5. Harris selected Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her running mate. Biden's withdrawal makes him the first eligible incumbent president since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 not to run for re-election, and the first to withdraw after securing enough delegates to win the nomination. Harris is the first nominee who did not participate in the primaries since Hubert Humphrey, also in 1968.
Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, a member of the Republican Party, is running for re-election for a second, non-consecutive term, after losing to Biden in the 2020 presidential election. In the run-up to the election, on May 30, 2024, Trump was convicted of 34 felonies related to falsifying business records, becoming the first president to be found guilty of a crime. On July 13, Trump was shot in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
The presidential election will take place at the same time as elections for the U.S. Senate, House, gubernatorial, and state legislatures. Trump was nominated during the 2024 Republican National Convention on July 15.
The winner of this election is scheduled to be inaugurated on January 20, 2025, as the 47th president and 50th vice president of the United States, respectively.
Democratic Party
Joe Biden Jason Palmer No popular vote held
On April 25, 2023, President Joe Biden announced his run for re-election, keeping Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate. Republicans intensified their criticism of Harris after Biden declared his intention to run for office. During late 2021, as Biden was facing low approval ratings, there was speculation that he would not seek re-election, and Representatives Carolyn Maloney, Tim Ryan and former Representative Joe Cunningham (all Democrats), publicly urged Biden not to run.
In addition to Biden's unpopularity, many were concerned about his age; he was the oldest person to assume the office at age 78 and would be 82 at the end of his first term. If re-elected, he would have been 86 at the end of his second term. According to an NBC poll released in April 2023, 70 percent of Americans — including 51 percent of Democrats — believed Biden should not run for a second term. Almost half said it was because of his age. According to the FiveThirtyEight national polling average, Biden's current approval rating was 41 percent, while 55 percent disapproved. There was also speculation that Biden might face a primary challenge from a member of the Democratic Party's progressive faction. After Democrats outperformed expectations in the 2022 midterm elections, many believed the chances that Biden would run for and win his party's nomination had increased.
Author Marianne Williamson announced her candidacy in February 2023, before Biden announced his own candidacy for re-election. Williamson had previously sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. In April 2023, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his candidacy for the nomination. On October 9, 2023, Kennedy announced that he would be dropping out of the Democratic primary and would instead run as an independent candidate. Representative Dean Phillips announced his run against Biden on October 26. Venture capitalist Jason Palmer announced his campaign on October 22.
Williamson announced her initial withdrawal on February 7, 2024, though she resumed her campaign a few weeks later. On March 6, 2024, Philips suspended his campaign after failing to win any primaries the previous night on Super Tuesday, followed by Williamson on June 11. Despite being perceived as a minor candidate, Palmer won the American Samoa caucuses, making him the first candidate to win a contested primary against an incumbent president since Ted Kennedy in 1980. He won no other contests and suspended his candidacy on May 15, 2024. On March 12, 2024, Biden obtained a majority of delegates, officially becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Williamson re-entered the presidential race on July 2 and called for an open convention.
Following a widely panned debate performance against Donald Trump on June 27, 2024 and a COVID-19 diagnosis in mid-July, Biden announced on July 21 that he would withdraw from the presidential race, allowing the Democratic Party to choose a new candidate. He endorsed incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidential nomination. Soon after, Harris announced that she was running for the 2024 Democratic nomination. By the end of the following day, July 22, Harris had secured enough delegate endorsements to become the Democratic Party's new presumptive nominee.
Because of concerns regarding ballot deadlines in Ohio, the party held a virtual vote by delegates to select the party's nominee prior to their in-person convention, in which Harris secured a majority of delegates' votes on August 2. Harris secured the nomination after voting closed on August 5.
If she wins, Harris would become the first female and first Asian American president of the United States, and the second African-American president after Barack Obama.
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| Kamala Harris | Tim Walz |
| for President | for Vice President |
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| 49th Vice President of the United States (2021–present) |
41st Governor of Minnesota (2019–present) |
Republican Party
Donald Trump, the then-incumbent president, was defeated by Biden in the 2020 election and is not term-limited to run again in 2024, making him the fifth ex-president to seek a second non-consecutive term. If he wins, Trump would be the second president to win a non-consecutive term, after Grover Cleveland in 1892. Trump filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on November 15, 2022, and announced his candidacy in a speech at Mar-a-Lago the same day. Trump was considered an early frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, following his 2024 campaign announcement on November 15, 2022. Trump announced in March 2022 that if he runs for re-election and wins the Republican presidential nomination, his former vice president Mike Pence will not be his running mate.
In June 2023, Trump was indicted over his handling of classified documents which contained materials sensitive to national security. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was seen as the main challenger to Trump for the Republican nomination; he raised more campaign funds in the first half of 2022 and had more favorable polling numbers than Trump by the end of 2022. On May 24, 2023, DeSantis announced his candidacy on Twitter in an online conversation with Twitter CEO Elon Musk. "American decline is not inevitable—it is a choice...I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American comeback", DeSantis added. His campaign stated to have raised $1 million in the first hour following the announcement of his candidacy. Speaking on Fox & Friends, he stated that he would "destroy leftism" in the United States. At the end of July 2023, FiveThirtyEight's national polling average of the Republican primaries had Trump at 52 percent, and DeSantis at 15.
Following the Iowa caucuses, in which Trump posted a landslide victory, DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump, leaving the former president and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who served in Trump's cabinet, as the only remaining major candidates. Trump continued to win all four early voting contests while Haley's campaign struggled to gain momentum. On March 6, 2024, the day after winning only one primary out of fifteen on Super Tuesday, Haley suspended her campaign. Trump became the only remaining major candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
On March 12, 2024, Trump officially became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
On July 15, 2024, the first day of the Republican National Convention, Trump officially announced that Senator J. D. Vance would be his running mate. Trump had survived an assassination attempt days earlier with a gunshot wound to the ear.
Republican nominees
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| Donald Trump | JD Vance |
| for President | for Vice President |
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| 45th President of the United States (2017–2021) |
U.S. Senator from Ohio (2023–present) |
Third-party and independent candidates
Third-party and independent candidates have also announced presidential runs, including Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy dropped out of the race in August 2024, though he remains on the ballot in some states. Centrist political organization No Labels abandoned its efforts in April 2024. Some existing third parties, such as the American Solidarity Party, the Prohibition Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the Green Party have announced presidential nominees.
With majority ballot access
Libertarian Party
Chase Oliver was chosen by the Libertarian Party as its presidential nominee on May 26, 2024, at the 2024 Libertarian National Convention. Oliver was the party's candidate in the 2022 United States Senate election in Georgia. As of May 2024[update], the party has ballot access in at least 37 states with a total of 380 electoral votes.
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| Chase Oliver | Mike ter Maat |
| for President | for Vice President |
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| Sales account executive from Georgia |
Economist from Virginia |
Green Party
Stein was also the party's candidate in 2012 and 2016. Stein is a physician and a former member of the Lexington Town Meeting. On August 16, Stein selected academic Butch Ware as her running mate.
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| Jill Stein | Butch Ware |
| for President | for Vice President |
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| Physician from Massachusetts |
Academic from California |
With partial ballot access
These third-party candidates have ballot access in some states, but not enough to get 270 votes needed to win the presidency, without running a write-in campaign.
- American Solidarity Party: Peter Sonski, Connecticut school board member
- Approval Voting Party: Blake Huber, activist and nominee for president in 2020
- Constitution Party: Randall Terry, activist and perennial candidate
- Independent American Party and Constitution Party offshoots: Joel Skousen, survivalist and consultant
- Prohibition Party: Michael Wood, businessman
- Party for Socialism and Liberation: Claudia De la Cruz, political activist
- Socialist Equality Party: Joseph Kishore, writer and SEP nominee in 2020
- Socialist Workers Party: Rachele Fruit, hotel worker and trade unionist
Independent candidates
The following notable individuals are running independently for president.
- Cornel West, academic, left-leaning and anti-war activist and public intellectual, previously both, People's Party and Green Party primaries candidate launching an independent campaign
Withdrawn candidates
The following notable individual(s) announced and then suspended their campaigns before the election:
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., environmental lawyer, anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist, previously Democratic primaries candidate launching an independent campaign (endorsed Trump)
See also
In Spanish: Elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos de 2024 para niños
