As the most turbulent presidential campaign in decades enters its final hours, Americans can be forgiven for wondering: What just happened?
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are separated by the narrowest of margins in polls – which show Tuesday's election is a coin flip – and by a chasm in their future vision for the world's premier economic and military power. US voters will either pick their first female, Black and Asian leader – or reappoint a chief executive seeking an unprecedented return to the White House he left in disgrace nearly four years ago.
That's the cast – and then consider the backdrop. The cycle began in a country still reeling from the once-in-a-century Covid-19 pandemic, when Americans elected Joe Biden as the oldest president in US history, and Trump's supporters attacked the Capitol to try and reverse his loss. It's since encompassed the outbreak of major wars in Europe and the Middle East, raising fears the US could get sucked in; a spike in inflation like no American aged under 40 had ever witnessed; and a rollback of federal abortion rights by the Supreme Court.
And even that is just a sliver of the drama and chaos that Americans have experienced during the 2024 campaign itself.
Democrats ditched incumbent president Biden in favor of his deputy — Vice President Harris — without consulting their voters. GOP candidate Trump bulldozed his way through primaries, at times campaigning from the New York courtroom where he was ultimately convicted for paying hush money to an adult film star – and then was shot and injured at a rally.
‘That Was the Craziest'
No wonder so many Americans, from first-time voters to seasoned movers and shakers in the campaign-finance world, are still trying to gather their bearings.
Gideon Stein — an entrepreneur, philanthropist and major Democratic donor — is clear about the turning point. “The debate on June 27,” he says. “That to me was the craziest.”
Back then, Biden was still seeking re-election but struggling to ignite much enthusiasm. Dogged by questions about his fitness for another term, he proposed an early debate against Trump in June. To say the strategy backfired is an understatement. So halting and incoherent was the president's performance that he could no longer hold back the dam of angst around his age.
“That's why I got engaged and used my voice as a donor,” says Stein, who was among the group of key Democratic funders who made it clear to the party that they'd withhold donations until Biden was replaced on the ballot. “We were going to continue to invest down ballot, but weren't going to invest in the presidential because everything we were seeing was that he was going to lose.”
Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed Harris as his successor. Looking back, Stein says it was the right move: Democrats have a much better shot at keeping the White House with the vice president atop the ticket. He made good on his promise to the party to donate $3.5 million, disbursing some of it over the past week.
Still, the incident left Democrats with a compressed calendar to introduce Harris to the nation — and a credibility gap to address. Before Biden's debate performance, party officials had mocked and disputed concerns about his age. “They were telling us he was bench-pressing 350 pounds, doing summersaults,” says Eric Levine, a Republican donor who voted for Trump and raised about $1.8 million for down ballot races.
‘Coming After You'
Levine agrees that the president's withdrawal is the most memorable moment of 2024 – “that, and the assassination attempt.”
The moment of maximum drama on the GOP side arrived on July 13, when a bullet grazed Trump's ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing an attendee. Photos showed a bloodstained ex-president defiantly pumping his fist.
For Eric Marks, a 57-year-old from Kalamazoo, Michigan, that was the most impactful incident of the election. “If the people coming after you know that you're standing up for the truth and they have something to hide, they're going to do whatever they can do to silence you,” he says. US officials have said the shooter was 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by the Secret Service.
In their truncated three-month-long contest, Trump and Harris have offered sharply different programs for the country that clarify the high stakes.
On the economy, Harris has focused on the so-called sandwich generation, those caught between raising kids and caring for elderly parents. She's promised to provide as much as $25,000 in down-payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, and to expand the child tax credit.
Trump says he'll reduce the corporate tax rate and abolish taxes on Social Security and overtime pay, among other plans. He's also vowed to crack down on undocumented migrants by deporting millions of them.
These messages are getting amplified in advertising campaigns blitzing the country, and especially the handful of states that will likely be decisive: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia. A record $15.9 billion will be spent on federal elections, including House and Senate races, according to OpenSecrets.
Chris Martin, a 38-year-old Black man in Sandy Springs, Georgia — a northern suburb of Atlanta – admits to election fatigue. Every other commercial is political, voters are constantly hammered by text messages from the campaigns, and it's getting a bit much.
“It's this whole us versus them thing going on, and I'm sick of it,” says Martin, who highlighted Trump's unsubstantiated claims that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets. “It's nasty stuff, and it's along the lines of race and nationality. The stuff they say about immigrants, it's just awful.”
Internationally, the Democratic candidate has espoused a similar position to Biden, endorsing the US role in NATO and support for Ukraine against Russia's invasion. She's had to contend with a schism within the Democratic party driven by Israel's war in Gaza, which is pressuring Harris' support in Michigan, a swing state with a large Arab-American population. Opposition to the war consumed the headlines last spring as student protests erupted on college campuses across the US.
Trump, in a continuation of his first-term stance, has questioned America's global security commitments. He's vowed to resume his trade war with China, by ramping up tariffs on the US's closest economic competitor, and threatens a broad 10% duty on other countries too.
‘Never as Dramatic'
The global backdrop is contributing to election tensions on both sides, according to Rocky Raczkowski, a Republican and former member of the Michigan House of Representatives. “There is economic unease and world turmoil unease with what's happening with Ukraine, Israel and Iran,” he says. “There is also malaise among Democrats, especially progressives, that the system isn't working for them. And there is anger among Republican voters who think the system is selling us down the road to other countries.”
Whether it's driven by events at home or abroad, angst around the vote is widespread. An Oct. 31 AP-NORC Center poll found seven in ten Americans are either anxious or frustrated with the 2024 presidential campaign – an even higher share than in the pandemic-disrupted election of 2020.
Taryn Carthers is one of them. A 21-year-old retail worker who lives northwest of Atlanta, she hasn't followed many campaigns —- but says this one is the craziest.
“I remember being in elementary school when Obama and Romney were running for office,” she says. “It was never as dramatic as what we are dealing with now.” Carthers has gone from being demoralized when Biden led the Democratic ticket, to reinvigorated by the ascent of Harris – and now she says she's despondent again over all the stress. “I'm excited to vote, but also very excited for this election season to be over.”
In the campaign's last week, both sides have been trying to capitalize on missteps from their opponents in order to sway remaining undecided voters who could tilt the outcome.
Trump held a rally at New York City's Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27, where his allies made racist and misogynistic remarks — including calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” — that Democrats pounced on. But a presidential gaffe during a subsequent attempt to capitalize on the incident, in which Biden appeared to describe Trump's supporters as garbage, allowed Republicans an outrage cycle of their own. Even as Biden insisted he was only referring to the comedian who cast the original insult, Trump took to the campaign trail in a garbage truck.
‘Alone With Our Thoughts'
Trump has also sought to keep the embers of his 2020 revolt burning, maintaining without evidence that the vote that year was fraudulent – and potentially sowing distrust in the soon-to-be-revealed 2024 results. States have bolstered election protocols to guard against disruptions.
The GOP contender, ever superstitious, is scheduled to wrap up his campaign in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the third straight cycle – before heading to Florida to await the count. Harris will hold a rally on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, made famous by the movie “Rocky,” and then return to Washington. She'll spend election night at her alma mater Howard University.
In Madison, Wisconsin, Debra Zillmer has hit on her own election strategy: get out of town. The 70-year-old, a retired orthopedic surgeon who's voting for Harris, has taken to traveling with her husband in their recreational vehicle to escape from the swing state. Her motive will likely resonate with many Americans, in the final days of a disorienting campaign.
“We just have to get out of there, be alone with our thoughts, not be watching the news all the time,” Zillmer says. “I find it very unsettling.”
