Your Guide to the 2024 Presidential Election

President Biden’s re-election campaign is under way. Two Democrats, Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , aim to challenge him, but aren’t viewed as significant threats.

On Nov. 5, 2024, the Republican and Democratic nominees will face off in the general election. Both candidates are poised to fight over a small number of battleground states by shoring up their base and trying to appeal to independent and undecided voters.

Biden’s age is set to be a talking point in the election cycle. At 80 years old, he is the oldest president in U.S. history.

GOP candidates have said the economy has faltered under Biden. He has cast Republicans as a danger to democracy and abortion rights.

Here is what to know about the 2024 election.

Who is running for president in 2024?

Democrats are set to back Biden, who announced his re-election campaign in April. He is expected to easily defeat two long-shot challengers in the primary: Williamson, an author who also ran in 2020, and Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has long pushed antivaccine conspiracy theories and is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy.

The GOP field is much more crowded.

Trump, 77, announced his third consecutive presidential bid in November 2022 after failing to win the Oval Office in 2020. Trump remains popular with many GOP voters, polls show. However, many of the candidates he backed in the 2022 midterm elections lost their races. Trump is running for office while facing federal felony charges alleging he mishandled classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago residence and state criminal charges in New York in a hush-money payments case. He has denied wrongdoing.

DeSantis’s campaign kicked off with a glitchy Twitter event in May. The governor, 44, portrays himself as an unabashed conservative and is pitching Americans on his “Florida blueprint,” with tough stances on issues such as guns, education and abortion.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley

Former Vice President Mike Pence, 64, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, 60, announced their candidacies in June. Both men kicked off their campaigns by denouncing Trump’s leadership.

Other Republicans who have entered the race include North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum ; former Texas congressman Will Hurd ; former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson ; entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy ; South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott ; Miami Mayor Francis Suarez ; and Larry Elder, a radio host who in 2021 was California’s leading Republican nominee in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recall election.

For more information on who is running for president, check out The Wall Street Journal’s guide to the candidates.

When are the presidential primaries and national conventions?

The candidates are vying for their party’s nomination and the chance to face off in the general election, held Nov. 5, 2024. The winner is scheduled to be inaugurated in January 2025.

The state-by-state primaries and caucuses will kick off in early 2024, culminating with party conventions the following summer.

Democrats are aiming to hold their first primary in South Carolina instead of Iowa, marking the biggest change to the Democratic National Committee’s nomination process in decades.

Super Tuesday, considered the most important day of the presidential-nomination process, will take place March 5. Voters in more than a dozen states, including California, Texas, North Carolina and Virginia, will cast their ballots.

Parties name their official candidates at their respective national conventions based on who received the most votes in the state primaries. In 2024, the Republican National Convention will be held from July 15-18 in Milwaukee, while the Democratic Party will hold its national convention in Chicago from Aug. 19-22.

What are the candidates talking about?

Biden has said he built a strong legislative record, including securing funding to fight the Covid-19 pandemic and passing broad infrastructure and climate measures.

His opponents have cited polls showing that a majority of Americans don’t approve of his performance as president. They say he is too old for the Oval Office. 

Biden has answered questions about his age by saying that people should watch him do the job. He has emphasized in his re-election campaign that he will support freedoms he says are under threat, including abortion access, same-sex marriage and voting rights. Republicans, meanwhile, are pledging to steady the economy. 

What are the biggest issues?

Abortion

The Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade last year shifted the legality of abortion back to the states, creating a patchwork of abortion access across the nation. Lawmakers have the power to pass abortion protections or restrictions at the federal level, fueling debate over the issue in the 2024 election cycle. House and Senate Democrats have tried to pass federal legislation protecting abortion access. Abortion-rights supporters have prevailed on ballot measures and in some state-level races since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Some Republicans have struggled with how much to restrict the procedure. 

Economy

Inflation will be a key point as American shoppers enter a third year of higher prices on goods and services. Republicans say the economy has wavered under Biden while his administration cites economic bright spots like the low unemployment rate.

Guns

Guns have been an enduring discussion in U.S. politics following a rise in mass shootings. Democrats have called for broad federal gun-control policies, but have largely been blocked, and some states have advanced their own gun legislation. Many Republican-led state legislatures in recent years have made it easier to obtain and carry guns, although there is also a push in some places for red-flag laws that remove guns from people deemed dangerous.

Immigration

On immigration, Republicans have long advocated strict closed-border policies for migrants entering the country at the southern U.S. border. The Biden administration in recent months has tried a new strategy that applies stiff penalties to people who enter the country illegally and provides alternative routes to the U.S. to try to deter people from journeying north.

Foreign Policy

Candidates will likely focus on China and Russia in their foreign-policy discussions. Some Republican politicians support a ban on TikTok over what they say are national-security concerns about the Chinese-owned app. Both Democrats and Republicans have advocated for revving up domestic semiconductor manufacturing, in part to help counter China’s ambitions.

Democrats and the mainstream of the Republican party have backed Biden’s multibillion-dollar effort to support Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion. Trump has refused to commit to aiding Ukraine should he be elected again and DeSantis has said the U.S. shouldn’t necessarily help defend Ukraine against Russia.

What are the key states to watch?

The candidates are expected to focus on the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which swung to Biden in 2020 from Trump in 2016.

Arizona used to be a Republican stronghold, but Biden won the state in 2020 as its demographics shifted. Democratic activists in recent years have been trying to turn out more voters from the state’s growing Latino population.

Georgia has become one of the country’s new tossup states in recent years. Trump’s appeals to white voters in the 2016 and 2020 elections alienated some people of color in Georgia, who make up nearly half the state’s population.

Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were “blue wall” states that Trump turned in the 2016 election, thanks in large part to his appeals to workers. Biden notched victories in all three in 2020 after he focused on appealing to suburban and independent voters. North Carolina and Nevada have been close in recent elections and will also be heavily contested.

What does the electoral map look like?

The swing voters in the battleground states represent a small slice of the electorate but can turn the entire outcome because of the Electoral College.

The Electoral College, in which state delegates vote for a presidential candidate, gives more sway to smaller states. Every state receives at least three electors no matter its population. Wyoming, with a population of about 580,000 people, has three electoral votes, meaning each elector potentially represents roughly 193,300 people. In a state like California, which has approximately 39 million people and 54 electoral votes, each elector represents about 723,000 people.

Biden in 2020 won the popular vote by seven million votes and the Electoral College by a count of 306 to Trump’s 232.

Trump won in 2016 largely by appealing to white, working-class voters, a base that has been shrinking. Democratic-leaning minority groups and younger white people with college degrees are growing as a share of the electorate. 

White suburban women, who make up a fifth of the electorate, have swung their support between Democrats and Republicans in recent years, depending on the state of the economy, abortion and other issues. 

This article may be periodically updated.

Write to Alyssa Lukpat at [email protected] and Jennifer Calfas at [email protected]