All 435 voting-members All six non-voting delegates
Map of the 2024 House races Democratic incumbent Democratic incumbent retiring Republican incumbent Republican incumbent retiring Vacant District map struck down
Map of the 2024 gubernatorial elections Term-limited or retiring Democrat Republican incumbent Term-limited or retiring Republican New Progressive incumbent Nonpartisan No election
This will be the first presidential election held after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and the third overall election cycle after the 2022 midterm elections and the 2023 off-year elections. Republican-controlled states predominately passed near-total bans on abortion in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision. By April 2023, abortion was "largely illegal" throughout much of the United States.[1] According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, there were 15 states that have de jure early stage bans on abortion explicitly without exceptions for rape or incest: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.[1] In states with laws granting exceptions, it was reported de facto that "very few exceptions to these new abortion bans have been granted" and that patients who had been raped or otherwise qualified for exceptions were being turned away, citing "ambiguous laws and the threat of criminal penalties make them unwilling to test the rules".[2]
Democrats outperformed Biden's results in the 2020 U.S. presidential election in several 2022 House special elections, with abortion cited as a major contributor to their victories.[3] Then during the 2023 elections, both Democratic and Republican operatives attributed the Democrats' overperformance streak to the growing bipartisan support of broad abortion rights in the wake of Dobbs decision.[4][5] Thus, many conservative political analysts and commentators called a continued Republican alliance with the anti-abortion movement "untenable" and an "electoral disaster", and urged the party to favor abortion rights.[6] Some issue polling has shown Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee, outrunning his party and closing the gap with Democrats on the issue of abortion, but no election data with Trump directly on the ballot has happened to verify these results.[7]
On August 1, 2023, a Washington, D.C., federal grand jury indicted Trump again on four felony counts of conspiracy and obstruction related to Trump's role in the January 6 attack and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.[11]
On August 11, four months after incumbent president and Democratic candidate Joe Biden announced his re-election bid, Garland appointed David C. Weiss to serve as special counsel to investigate Biden's son, Hunter Biden, who was indicted on September 14, 2023, on three federal firearms-related charges.[14][15]
On September 22, 2023, Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey and his wife Nadine were both indicted on bribery charges.[16][17]
The 2024 United States presidential election will be the 60th quadrennial U.S. presidential election. This will be the first presidential election under the electoral vote distribution determined by the 2020 census. Presidential electors who will elect the President and Vice President of the United States will be chosen; a simple majority (270) of the 538 electoral votes are required to win the election. President Joe Biden is running for a second term, with Vice President Kamala Harris once again serving as his running mate.[19] Other individuals have launched their candidacies in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries, though the last time a sitting president eligible for re-election did not win re-nomination from their respective party was in the 1968 presidential election.[20]
All 33 seats in Senate Class 1 and one seat in Senate Class 2 will be up for election; at least one additional special election will take place to fill vacancies that arise during the 118th Congress. Democrats control the majority in the closely-divided Senate following the 2022 U.S. Senate elections, but they will have to defend 23 seats in 2024. Three Democratic-held seats up for election are in the heavily Republican-leaning states of Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia, all of which were won comfortably by Trump in both 2016 and 2020.[24] Other potential Republican targets include seats in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while Democrats may target Republican-held seats in Florida and Texas.[25]
Special elections
Two special elections are scheduled to fill the unexpired terms of senators who vacated their seats during the 118th Congress:
Nebraska Class 2: Republican Ben Sasse resigned his seat on January 8, 2023, to become President of the University of Florida. Pete Ricketts was appointed by Nebraska governor Jim Pillen to fill the seat until the special election, which will take place concurrently with the regularly-scheduled 2024 Senate elections.[26][27][28]
Elections will be held for the governorships of eleven of the fifty U.S. states and two U.S. territories. Special elections may be held for vacancies in the other states and territories, if required by respective state or territorial constitutions.
Most legislative chambers will hold regularly-scheduled elections in 2024. The exceptions are the Michigan Senate, Minnesota Senate, and both legislative chambers in the states of Alabama, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia. In chambers that use staggered terms, only a portion of the seats in the chamber will be up for election.
This table shows the partisan results of presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative races held in each state and territory in 2024. Note that not all states and territories hold gubernatorial, state legislative, and Senate elections in 2024. The five territories and Washington, D.C., do not elect members of the Senate, and the territories do not take part in presidential elections; instead, they each elect one non-voting member of the House. Nebraska's unicamerallegislature and the governorship and legislature of American Samoa are elected on a non-partisan basis, and political party affiliation is not listed.
^One of Arizona's senators, Mark Kelly, is a Democrat. The other senator from Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema, was elected as a Democrat but registered as an Independent in December 2022.
^One of Maine's senators, Susan Collins, is a Republican. The other senator from Maine, Angus King, is an independent who has caucused with Democrats since taking office in 2013.
^Though a majority of its members identify as Republicans, the unicameral Nebraska Legislature is officially nonpartisan.
^One of Vermont's senators, Peter Welch, is a Democrat. The other senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, was elected as an independent and has caucused with Democrats since taking office in 2007.
^Although elections for governor of American Samoa are non-partisan, Governor Lemanu Peleti Mauga affiliates with the Democratic Party.
^Although Guam does not have a vote in the Electoral College, the territory has held a presidential advisory vote for every presidential election since 1980.
^Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Pierluisi is a member of the Puerto Rican New Progressive Party, but affiliates with the Democratic Party at the national level.
^Puerto Rico's Resident Commissioner, Jenniffer González, was elected as a member of the New Progressive Party and has caucused with Republicans since taking office in 2017.
References
^ abEdsall, Thomas B. (April 12, 2023). "How The Right Came To Embrace Intrusive Government". The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved April 12, 2023. Republicans in states across the country are defiantly pushing for the criminalization of abortion — of the procedure, of abortifacient drugs and of those who travel out of state to terminate pregnancy... According to research provided to The Times by the Kaiser Family Foundation, states that have abortion bans at various early stages of pregnancy with no exception for rape or incest include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
^Walker, Amy Schoenfeld (January 21, 2023). "Most Abortion Bans Include Exceptions. In Practice, Few Are Granted". The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved April 13, 2023. ...But in the months since the court's decision, very few exceptions to these new abortion bans have been granted, a New York Times review of available state data and interviews with dozens of physicians, advocates and lawmakers revealed. Instead, those with means are traveling to states where abortion is still broadly legal or are obtaining abortion pills at home because the requirements to qualify for exceptions are too steep. Doctors and hospitals are turning away patients, saying that ambiguous laws and the threat of criminal penalties make them unwilling to test the rules.
