On November 5th Americans will go to the polls to elect their next president. Until June 27th it seemed that the match-up would be between the same two candidates as in 2020: Joe Biden, the Democratic incumbent, and Donald Trump, his Republican predecessor in office. But that night Mr Biden delivered a disastrous debate performance. It immediately made Democrats question Mr Biden’s fitness for the job. On July 21st he bowed to pressure and withdrew from the race. He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as the Democratic candidate.
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Polls after Mr. Biden dropped out suggest Ms Harris is closer to Mr Trump than her predecessor was. The chart above shows the latest national averages. Ms Harris has the support of enough delegates to the Democratic National Convention to win the nomination. She will have little time to unite her party, fire up voters, and counter Mr Donald Trump campaign. Mr Biden’s presidency has been defined by high inflation, big industrial-policy bills, and turmoil abroad, things which Republicans will seek to pin on Ms Harris too. But she has one clear advantage over Mr Biden: her age. At 59 she is over two decades younger than he is, and 18 years younger than Mr Trump.
Mr Donald Trump, meanwhile, has a dismal record: supporters tried to overturn his election loss in 2020; he faces federal charges over his alleged participation in that scheme and has been convicted of felonies relating to his 2016 presidential campaign. On July 13th, at a rally in Pennsylvania, a 20-year-old man shot at Mr Trump, grazing the former president’s ear and killing a bystander. After this assassination attempt, politicians of all stripes urged allies and rivals to lower the political temperature. Mr Donald Trump, who showed rare restraint in the aftermath of the shooting, has since returned to his divisive rhetoric in speeches.
The Economist is tracking the race. As well as an average of the polls, on this page you will find favourability ratings for Mr Donald Trump, Ms Harris and Mr Biden. You can also see historic polling data for Mr Biden and Mr Donald Trump, key dates in the race and candidate biographies. Stay informed with our weekday newsletter, The US in brief. And if you are interested in contests elsewhere, see our election tracker hub.
Editor’s note (July 30th): We have not yet seen enough polls to draw a new over-time trend since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. This chart still shows the contest between Mr Trump and Mr Biden.
Key dates
Aug 19th, Democratic National Convention
As at the Republican convention a month earlier, the Democrats will formally nominate their presidential candidate in Chicago.
Sep 10th, second presidential debate
The two main candidates will meet a week after Labor Day (traditionally when Americans begin to pay attention to the election). In the first debate, in June, Mr Donald Trump told outrageous falsehoods, while Mr Biden’s catastrophic performance sowed the seeds for the end of his candidacy.
Nov 5th, election day
Polls open on a Tuesday in early November, though early voting and mail-in ballot initiatives will mean many Americans will have already voted. Counting ballots will go on for weeks in some states.
Jan 6th, 2025, results certification
Once all votes are counted, the results must be certified by Congress. Normally a pro-forma event, in 2021 Mr Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building to stop the certification. He is on trial for his alleged role in the attack.
Jan 20th, 2025, inauguration
The new president will be sworn into office on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, DC.
The candidates
Kamala Harris
Vice-president
At 59, Ms Harris is more than two decades younger than Joe Biden, whom she replaced as the Democratic nominee. Her mother was an endocrinologist born in India; her father is an economist born in Jamaica. In California, she won elections as a prosecutor by leaning to the right on criminal-justice issues, while also appealing to Democrats, and was elected as the state’s attorney-general in 2010. Since she came to Washington, first as a senator in 2017, Ms Harris has been most effective at debates and hearings, where her skills as a litigator are on display.
She is a creature of institutional politics, not a visionary or an ideologue, and has struggled to define herself on a national stage. Her presidential run in 2020 crashed badly. As vice-president, she is tied to the Biden administration’s record, which is unpopular despite the major legislation it passed to onshore chip manufacturing and invest in green energy. If she is to beat Mr Trump she will need to answer his attack lines on immigration directly and lay out a more ambitious domestic policy agenda than Mr Biden was able to communicate.
Donald Trump
Former President
Mr Donald Trump extraordinary campaign follows his no less remarkable term as America’s 45th president, which concluded shortly after his supporters staged an armed attack on the Capitol. His alleged role in instigating the attack and a broader effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election resulted in two criminal indictments, in federal court and Georgia state court. He faces two others, totaling 91 felony charges. The 78-year-old denies all wrongdoing. Mr Trump is a billionaire who made (and lost) much of his money in real estate before he became a reality TV star. This time his campaign pairs familiar culture-war issues (building a border wall, “left-wing gender insanity”) with fresh grievances (against the lawyers prosecuting his cases and the judges overseeing them).
On July 13th a gunman shot Mr Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, grazing the former president’s ear but otherwise leaving him unharmed (a bystander was killed). Afterwards, Mr Trump briefly seemed a changed candidate, trying to present himself as a unifier in a speech at the Republican convention in Milwaukee. But he went back to his past ways quickly, throwing insults at his political opponents.
