The 7 charts that define the 2024 US presidential campaign

Tuesday marks the end of a turbulent White House race that has included everything from a sudden change at the top of the Democratic party ticket to two assassination attempts against the Republican candidate.

The frenzied contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden before her, has generated reams of data, shedding light on US public opinion and voter attitudes on everything from the economy and foreign policy to the candidates’ character.

Here are seven charts that have defined the 2024 presidential election.

Inflation

Inflation and the cost of living have been pivotal issues in the race, with voters consistently pointing to the economy and high prices as their top concerns.

While inflation has cooled significantly from post-pandemic highs, voters remain peeved by high prices — and Republicans have placed the blame squarely on Democrats. Trump’s most-aired advertisements have attempted to tie Harris to Biden’s economic policies, or “Bidenomics”.

While Trump claims that “inflation will vanish completely” if he is elected, mainstream economists have warned he will make it worse by levying large tariffs on imports and deporting millions of migrant workers.

The two candidates are virtually tied on economic issues in voters’ eyes. According to the October FT-Michigan Ross poll, 44 per cent of registered voters said they trust Trump more to handle the economy, compared with 43 per cent for Harris.

Candidacy, interrupted

After Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27 he came under huge pressure from within his party to step aside. On July 21, he dropped out. Harris replaced him as the Democratic nominee on August 5. This sequence of events sharply transformed the race’s polling picture and erased a Republican advantage.

Harris quickly closed Trump’s polling lead, although her edge has all but slipped away in recent weeks. The race is now a statistical tie, according to FT poll tracking.

Immigration

Record levels of US-Mexico border crossings in recent years have made immigration a weakness for Harris, whom Trump has blamed in part due to her role as “border tsar” under Biden.

More Americans said they trust Trump to handle immigration issues than Harris, according to a CNN poll in October. A majority of US voters also said they want immigration levels reduced.

Trump, whose rhetoric on immigration included a debunked conspiracy about pet-eating immigrants in Ohio, has promised the “largest deportation effort in American history” if elected and said he would use the military to round up undocumented migrants.

Apprehensions made after illegal border crossings soared until December 2023 but have fallen sharply since the Biden administration imposed limits on asylum seekers in June, and are now in line with Trump-era figures.

A more partisan version of the chart above played an unexpected role in this year’s campaign. At a July rally in Pennsylvania, Trump turned his head to look at it before he was shot in the ear by a would-be assassin. He credits the graphic with saving his life.

Trump’s indictments

In May, Trump became the first ex-US president to be convicted of a felony, when a New York jury found him guilty in the cover-up of “hush money” paid to silence a porn actress in the run-up to the 2016 election. He will be sentenced after the election.

Trump was charged in three other criminal cases, which have been either delayed or dismissed.

One federal indictment accused him of seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, and another of mishandling classified documents. Prosecutors in Georgia have filed a separate state case charging Trump with meddling in the 2020 election.

The documents case has been dismissed by a Florida judge — the Department of Justice is appealing that decision — and proceedings in Georgia are on hold. The DoJ’s elections case has yet to go to trial.

Trump says all this makes him the victim of a partisan “witch hunt” and has vowed retribution if he wins another four years in the White House. But the court cases have been a huge boon to his fundraising efforts.

Abortion

Protecting abortion access is a core of Harris’s platform — and an electoral weakness for Trump, who nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who in 2022 overturned Roe vs Wade, which had enshrined the national right to abortion.

The vice-president has campaigned heavily on the issue, including much-aired advertisements and a rally with Beyoncé in late October. Trump has boasted about being able to “kill Roe vs Wade” while rejecting calls from the religious right for a full-blown national abortion ban.

The overturning of Roe handed control of abortion rules to the states, and since then state-level Republican officials have ushered in increasingly prohibitive regulations. In 13 states, abortion is now banned in almost all circumstances, including for victims of rape and incest.

Some conservative lawmakers and judges also call for restrictions on access to contraception and fertility treatments, including in vitro fertilisation.

But public support for abortion rights has grown in the past 15 years, from a low of 47 per cent who thought abortion should be “legal in all/most cases” in 2009 to a high of 63 per cent this year.

Foreign policy

Trump and Harris hold starkly different world views. The former president advocates an “America first” agenda, including a sweeping new tariffs regime. He is sceptical of Nato and says he would cut a deal with Vladimir Putin to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Harris emphasises her commitment to Ukraine and US allies. She would likely maintain pressure on Beijing via tariffs.

On Israel, Harris has expressed concern over the suffering of Palestinian civilians more powerfully than Biden has, but also supports Israel’s “right to defend itself”. The administration’s stance has been a problem for some Arab-Americans in the swing state of Michigan.

In an FT-Michigan Ross poll, nearly half of survey respondents said the US was spending “too much” on military and financial aid for the two countries.

Money

This election will go down as the most expensive in history, with the presidential campaigns and supportive groups raising nearly $4bn as of mid-October: $2.2bn to support Harris and $1.7bn for Trump.

Individual donors have been critical for Democrats, especially after Harris entered the race. Her campaign received more than 600,000 contributions on each of its first two days, more than any day of Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Trump has relied heavily on the super-rich, who accounted for about 34 per cent of the total haul, according to an FT analysis. Four donors — banking heir Timothy Mellon, casino developer Miriam Adelson, shipping magnate Richard Uihlein and Elon Musk — gave about $432mn. About 6 per cent of pro-Harris groups’ funding came from billionaires.

Additional reporting by Stefania Palma in Washington