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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 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 presidential debate held in June 2024 intensified concerns about his age and health, and led to calls within his party for him to leave the race. Although he was initially adamant he would remain in the race, Biden withdrew on July 21 and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. 

This will be the first presidential election to occur after the reapportionment of votes in the United States Electoral College following the 2020 United States census. If the state results of 2020 were to stay the same in 2024, which has never occurred before, Democrats would have 303 electoral votes against the Republicans’ 235, a slight change from Biden’s 306 and Trump’s 232, meaning Democrats lost a net 3 electoral votes to reapportionment. This apportionment will remain through the 2028 election. Reapportionment will be conducted again after the 2030 census. 

Swing states

Red states and blue states

Most states are not competitive because demographics keep them solidly behind a party. Because of the nature of the Electoral College, this means a limited number of swing states—competitive states that “swing” between the parties—are vital to winning the presidency. These are the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; and the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina.

Due to gradual demographic shifts, some former swing states such as Iowa, Ohio, and Florida have shifted significantly towards the Republicans, while Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia have moved towards the Democrats. Arizona and Georgia have shifted from the Republicans and have become swing states, with Democrats winning both states by less than 1 point in the 2020 presidential election.

The Democratic electoral coalition, securing the “blue states” for Democratic presidential candidates, has had relatively high support among Black voters; voters who have graduated from college or who live in urban areas. White voters without college degrees have steadily increased their support for Republican candidates since the 1970s, while decreasing as a proportion of the electorate. The traditional Republican coalition in “red states” is composed mainly of rural White voters, evangelicals, the elderly, and non-college educated voters. Republicans had performed well with suburban, middle class voters since the 1950s, but this bloc has drifted away from them recently because of the rise of the Make America Great Again movement. 

The acceleration of this trend has been credited with tipping the 2020 presidential election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.

 

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