November 05, 2024
JASON BEAN; USA TODAY NETWORK/Mandi Wright; USA TODAY NETWORK
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have presented starkly different platforms in the 2024 presidential race.
Voters will choose between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in Tuesday's election, deciding a hard-fought race between two candidates with starkly different plans for the nation's future.
Harris became the Democratic candidate in July after President Joe Biden's exit following his disastrous debate with Trump the prior month. Trump had rolled through the Republican primaries, consolidating his power and influence atop the party with a campaign focused on attacking his opponent's record alongside Biden.
Polls close at 8 p.m.Tuesday and results will be updated in the charts below as they become available. All results are unofficial until certified by election officials.
The outcome of the presidential race is expected to hinge on results in the swing states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and North Carolina. Both candidates and their running mates – Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for Harris and Sen. JD Vance, of Ohio, for Trump – campaigned heavily in Pennsylvania and other battleground states during the closing weeks of the race.
National polls showed a toss-up between Harris and Trump. RealClearPolitics, an independent media company that tracks an average of national polls, found Trump had a 0.4 percentage point advantage with one week to go before the election.
Democrats have been energized by the pivot to Harris, who shifted the party's messaging to reach different pockets of voters in her bid to become the first woman elected president. The former prosecutor and U.S. senator from California campaigned on delivering relief to middle-class Americans struggling with the rising costs of housing, child care, groceries and health care. Harris also emphasized combating political extremism and defending abortion at the national level to stop the tide of states where access to such care has been restricted since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Trump campaigned on a platform targeting illegal immigration, vowing to strengthen the southern border and crack down on undocumented migrants living in the United States. The former president's "America First" agenda includes an economic policy that would raise tariffs on foreign goods with the intent of boosting U.S. manufacturing and energy production. Trump also wants to reassess the nation's longstanding foreign policy commitments to NATO and its role mediating conflicts in the Middle East.
Roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults voted in the 2020 election, aided by the introduction of early voting and mail-in ballots. The turnout was the highest it had been in more than a century, according to estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Pew Research Center. Polling ahead of Tuesday's election indicated that turnout could climb even higher this year. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found 89% of registered Democrats and 93% of registered Republicans said they were completely certain they would vote, compared with 74% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans four years ago.
Another Reuters/Ipsos poll released in October found that Americans ranked immigration, the economy and threats to democracy as the top issues for voters.
