Election 2024: Where the Presidential Race Stands Three Months Before Election Day

Election Day is just under three months away. The first early voting begins in just six weeks. So where do things stand? 

Five things are worth noting.

1. The race remains tight. The RealClear average of national polls has Kamala Harris up by half a percentage point over Donald Trump. That’s better than where Democrats were three weeks ago, when Trump led by slightly more than three points. However, it is well below where Democrats were four years ago, when Joe Biden led Trump by nearly seven points at this stage in the race. The fact that Harris lags Biden’s 2020 standing suggests that she still needs to make up ground. The Electoral College favors Republican candidates because rural red-leaning states have a disproportionate share of votes. A Democratic presidential candidate likely needs to build a three-percentage point lead in the national polls before their chance of winning the Electoral College tops 50 percent.

2. Momentum currently favors Democrats. George H. W. Bush famously called it the “Big Mo”—big momentum. Right now, Democrats look to have it. Harris’s slight lead over Trump in the average of national polls may understate things; polls are lagging indicators because it takes time to conduct them and prepare the results. Moreover, Harris is doing well in the battleground states that will decide the election. She is also seeing contributions flood into her campaign coffers and supporters lining up to attend her campaign events. Harris’s momentum could even increase. The Democratic National Convention opens in ten days. She should have an unparalleled opportunity to make the case for her candidacy to the nation. The problem with momentum, however, is that it can be fickle. Just ask Republicans. They left their national convention three weeks ago talking about running away with the presidential election. That talk has stopped.

3. Personalities, not policies, continue to dominate the campaign. Some presidential campaigns have defining issues. It might be Social Security. Or the national debt. Or tax rates. Or war. Election 2024 has yet to produce a defining issue, though abortion, immigration, and jobs are contenders. The Republican Party platform is long on slogans and short on specific policy prescriptions. Trump has disavowed Project 2025, which purported to lay out the agenda for a Trump presidency. Given its late start, the Harris-Walz campaign has stressed big themes like “freedom” and “fighting” for the American people, not specific governing priorities and choices. That could change in the coming weeks. But talk about which candidate is “dumb” or “weird” looks likely to dominate the political conversation. 

4. Foreign policy remains an afterthought. The United States faces a slew of challenges overseas. China, the war in Ukraine, and a possible regional war in the Middle East lead the list. Each of these issues and others are top priorities for some groups of voters. But neither Harris nor Trump is saying much beyond generalities about the U.S. role in the world. That doesn’t mean that the outcome of the U.S. election won’t have a major impact on U.S. foreign policy. To the contrary, Harris and Trump would likely approach the world very differently. 

5. Wildcards abound. July showed us how unpredictable the future can be. A lone gunman shot Trump. Biden quit the race. The stock market peaked and talk of recession revived. A misguided software update upended global travel. So events over the next ninety days could change the course of the electoral conversation. But the wildcards don’t end there. We don’t know how accurate the polls are. Or whether third-party candidates will continue to fade as factors in the race. Or who will turn out to vote. Or how the efforts in red states to make voting more secure (in the eyes of supporters)—or to suppress the Democratic vote (in the eyes of opponents)—will play out. Or whether America’s election infrastructure will stand up to what could potentially be another record turnout coupled with possible renewed efforts to intimidate the vote counters. 

So buckle up. It could be a turbulent next three months.

Campaign Update

Harris is now the official Democratic presidential nominee and not just the presumptive nominee. The Democratic Party wrapped up five days of online voting on Monday. Harris picked up 99 percent of the delegates’ votes. The vote ensures that Harris will meet the qualifying requirements in all fifty states for appearing on the ballot. As a result of the virtual vote, the roll-call vote at the Democratic National Convention in thirteen days will be symbolic rather than substantive.

Will we see a Harris-Trump debate? The answer seems to be yes, but some details remain to be worked out. At a press conference at Mar-a-Lago yesterday, Trump said there would be three presidential debates—one on Fox on September 4, one on ABC  on September 10, and one on NBC on September  25. (Trump confused when ABC and NBC might host debates, which his campaign subsequently corrected.) Harris has said she is willing to debate Trump on September 10, as Biden had agreed to do. So far, however, she has only said that she is “happy to have that conversation” about possible additional debates. Beyond that, the rules for the potential Fox and NBC debates have yet to be set.

What the Candidates Are Saying

Trump’s impromptu press conference at Mar-a-Lago yesterday covered a lot of ground. As is often the case with Trump, much of what he said wasn’t true. Harris’s ascension to the Democratic nomination is not “unconstitutional” as Trump himself later seemed to acknowledge. The “vast majority of the country” does not in fact “support” him. It is not the case that “not one American soldier was shot at or killed” in Afghanistan in 2020 as he negotiated with the Taliban. The rally he held on January 6, 2021 did not draw larger crowds than Martin Luther King’s famous 1963 “I-Have-A-Dream” speech. Trump did not fly on a helicopter with California powerbroker Willie Brown that nearly crashed.

Although Trump largely ignored substantive policy issues, he did make news on one issue. He argued that “the president should have at least a say” on setting interest rates because he personally would “have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve—or the chairman.” Placing decisions about interest-rate policy in the hands of the president probably belongs in the Hall of Fame of bad public-policy pronouncements. The Fed is independent for a reason. All presidents would have an incentive to use interest-rate policy to advance their political interests rather than the national interest.

Pro-Palestinian protesters tried to interrupt Harris as she spoke at a campaign rally in Detroit on Wednesday. She countered by saying: “If you want Trump to win, then say that.” That remark brought the crowd to its feet. 

Earlier in the day, Harris met with a group of activists that included leaders of the effort to press the Biden administration to change its policy toward the war in Gaza. The Harris campaign subsequently released a statement that “in this brief engagement,” the vice president “reaffirmed that her campaign will continue to engage with those communities.” One of the steps that the pro-Palestinian activists urged Harris to take is to embargo arms destined for Israel. Yesterday, Harris’s national security advisor, Phil Gordon, tweeted that Harris “will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups. She does not support an arms embargo on Israel. She will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law.”

JD Vance accused Tim Walz of dodging a deployment with the Minnesota National Guard to Iraq and embellishing his military service, calling it “stolen valor garbage.” The first charge is dubious, the second makes a mountain out of a molehill. Walz retired from the Minnesota National Guard in May 2005 after twenty-four years of service, and months before his unit received official deployment orders for Iraq. (It’s not clear when Walz submitted his papers requesting retirement.) Walz has said he decided to retire to focus on running for Congress. He filed his papers to do so in February 2005. The following month, the Pentagon indicated that the Minnesota National Guard would likely deploy to Iraq sometime in the next two years.

The embellishment charge turns on the proper way to refer to Walz’s military rank and whether he encouraged voters to believe he served in combat. Walz reached the rank of command sergeant major, but he officially retired with the lower rank of master sergeant because he didn’t complete the paperwork necessary to hold the rank in retirement. So, while it is correct to say that Walz reached the rank of command master sergeant or was a command master sergeant, it is incorrect to say he is a retired command sergeant major. The Harris campaign initially described Walz that way, which it has since changed in his online biography. 

Aside from that controversy, Republicans have noted that Walz said at a gubernatorial campaign event in 2018 that “we can make sure those weapons of war that I carried in war” are not flooding America’s cities. Walz never served in combat. However, he did deploy to Italy in 2003 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S. invasion of Iraq. More generally, Walz has downplayedhis National Guard service, saying: “There are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that.” And while Walz never saw combat during his time in the Minnesota National Guard, Democrats (and journalists) have pointed out that neither did Vance in his time in the Marine Corps. While the Republican vice-presidential nominee did deploy to Iraq for six months, he did so as a reporter in a public affairs unit and not as a frontline fighter. In all, the military-service flap appears to be what the Wall Street Journal editorial page today called “thin gruel.” Both Walz and Vance served their country honorably. 

What the Pundits Are Saying

Mark Hannah and Rachel Rizzo wrote in Foreign Policy that a Harris-Walz administration has the opportunity to make U.S. foreign policy less militaristic. Hannah and Rizzo contend that “Walz may help Harris reinvest in diplomacy and abandon America’s reflex for world-saving military interventionism. He ran for Congress in 2006 on opposition to the Iraq War, later led a group of Democrats urging then-President Barack Obama to abstain from war with Syria, and was an early co-sponsor of a war powers resolution that tried to end U.S. troop involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. He was also a vocal supporter of the Iran deal and saw the mutual benefits of opening up trade between Cuba and the United States.”

Washington Post reporters gained access to texts between JD Vance and a far-right conspiracy figure named Charles Johnson. According to the report, “their correspondence over…20 months—extending into the weeks before former president Donald Trump picked Vance as his running mate—a glimpse of the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s off-the-cuff musings, often matching his public expressions but voiced with much less polish and more profanity. Vance was just as casual in discussing America’s foreign alliances as he was in evaluating his own private alliances with the GOP’s moneyed class. With Johnson, he pondered responsibility for the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and crudely described his aversion to the Ukrainian government and refusal to consider its pleas for U.S. assistance.”

Foreign Policy’s Amy Mackinnon explored what Harris learned investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mackinnon reports that the investigation was “a highly formative experience that left her [Harris] with few illusions about Moscow’s intentions.”

What the Polls Show

The Pew Research Center released a report showing that how Americans view the U.S. role in the world varies substantially by age and less so by party identification. Older Americans are far more likely than younger Americans to say they want the United States to play an active role in world affairs. For instance, three-in-four Americans over the age of sixty-five favor an active U.S. role in the world; just one-in-three Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four do. In contrast, 60 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 51 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents favor an active U.S. role in the world. Where Democrats and Republicans diverge is on the question of allies: 76 percent of Democrats believe the United States should consider allies’ interests when making foreign-policy decisions while only 43 percent of Republicans do. 

The Campaign Schedule

The Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago in ten days (August 19, 2024).

The second presidential debate is in thirty-two days (September 10, 2024)

Donald Trump’s sentencing hearing on his New York felony convictions is in forty days (September 18, 2024).

The first in-person absentee voting in the nation begins in Minnesota and South Dakota in forty-two days (September 20, 2024).

Election Day is eighty-eight days away.

Inauguration Day is 164 days away.

Shelby Sires assisted in the preparation of this post.