Donald Trump and the Republican party were the clear winners of the 2024 US elections. Peter Finn notes some highlights of the 2024 campaign, discusses the federal results as they currently stand and looks forward to elections in 2025 and the 2026 midterms.

• This article is part of ‘The 2024 Elections’ series curated by Peter Finn (Kingston University). The series has explored the 2024 US elections at the state and national level. If you are interested in contributing to the series, contact Peter Finn (finn@kingston.ac.uk).

In 2020 it took days before Joe Biden was confirmed as the winner of the US presidential election, and that was followed by months of spurious legal challenges, attacks against election officials and elected representatives, all culminating in the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol. In 2024, while the nuances of state and local elections will take longer to sift out, the shape of the election results at the federal level became clear quickly. Donald Trump won the presidency, the Trump focused Republican Party won the Senate, and though the results of the House of Representatives are yet to become fully clear, the Republican Party may well hold onto a slender majority in that chamber as well. 

A prolonged campaign

The 2024 campaign for the presidency formally began in November 2022, when Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican Party’s nomination. Joe Biden, meanwhile, declared his candidacy for the Democratic Party in April 2023. Until Biden was faced with an undeniable shift in political gravity in the summer of 2024, neither of their positions as the presumptive candidate for their respective parties was challenged.

In late June 2024, however, Biden struggled to clearly articulate points in a debate with Trump, leading to a clamour within his party to replace him as the presidential nominee. Less than a month after the debate Biden had stood down as the Democratic nominee, and endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him. Harris formally secured the Democratic nomination on August 5, and the following day announced Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her Vice-Presidential running mate.

In mid-July, the first of two assassination attempts against Trump saw him shot in the ear. Two days later he announced Ohio Senator JD Vance as his Vice-Presidential nominee during the Republican convention in Milwaukee Wisconsin.

Trump’s Republican Party wins

As of writing, Trump has 295 electoral college votes, well above the 270 needed to win the presidency, with just two states, Arizona and Nevada, yet to declare. It appears that the 17 combined Electoral Votes from these two states will add to Trump’s tally.

In the Senate, meanwhile, the Republican Party has taken control of the chamber from the Democrats as it has flipped seats in Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia, and may also shortly add Pennsylvania to this tally (though this race is incredibly close, so watch this space). Giving them at least 52 seats, and thus control of the Senate, in the 119th Congress.

“Santiago Abascal en la CPAC en Washingto” (Public Domain) by VOX España

With just under 40 of 435 seats yet to be called in the house, the Republicans may have a net gain of a single seat. If they can hold on to the House of Representatives, then the Republican Party would have unified control over the three federal branches of government, as well as a sympathetic bench in the Supreme Court. Combined with the rhetorical flourish that one assumes Trump will continually note, celebrating his victory in the popular vote as well as the Electoral College, the narrative the Republican Party will be able to stitch together around being given a mandate to govern will be strong.

Looking forward

The flipside to Republican jubilation is, of course, Democratic despondency, though Vice President Kamala Harris did do a sound job of managing to strike at least a partly upbeat note in her concession speech. A period of reflection, one presumes, will be required, but this will have to be counterbalanced against the need to act as an effective political opposition, especially so if the Democrats fail to take control of the House of Representatives.

At least in part, the behaviour of the Democratic Party will be shaped by the choices Trump and his Republican Party make about how to govern. If the second Trump administration is as haphazard and scattershot in narrative, and often in policy, terms as the first, they may find themselves needing to operate reactively: constantly needing to counter false narratives and push back against right hand turns in policy. If, however, the second Trump administration adopts a more traditional government strategy, perhaps choosing the implementation of policy choices over media noise, then the Democratic Party will need to develop a mastery of procedure and the nitty gritty of federal rules to counter the Trump administration during the 119th Congress.

Looking forward, given the size, scale and complexity and multi-level nature of the US political system, there will almost certainly be special elections within the next year that will allow both parties to try to gain a read on the popularity, or not, of Trump’s policies, at least with relation to small segments of the US electorate. Moreover, in November 2025, there are off- year gubernatorial elections in New Jersey, currently held by term limited Governor Democrat Phil Murphy, and Virginia, currently held by term limited Governor Republican Glenn Youngkin. The contests in both states may serve as bellwethers for the Democratic Party’s near-term electoral future: Kamala Harris won New Jersey by five percentage points, down from Joe Biden’s victory margin of nearly 16 percentage points in 2020. In Virginia, meanwhile, the Democrats’ margin similarly fell from the over 10 points in 2020 to just over five (over the same period the state flipped from a Democratic to Republican Governor).

There are also a range of other state and local level positions on the ballot in November 2025. Furthermore, the 2026 midterms are now already just under two years away and will only be just a year and three quarters after inauguration day 2025. This (valid concerns about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies aside for just a moment), leaves Trump and his Republican Party a short window to demonstrate that they should be given another strong mandate in the 120th Congress, and the Democratic party firm goals to work towards in the short to medium term.

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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics. 
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