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What's Unique About the 2024 US Presidential Election? Six Facts
RBC also documents other facts that make the current US presidential election unique, including the belated resignation of the Democratic Party candidate, three unprecedented assassination attempts on Republican Party candidates, and much more.
Initially, the current President Joe Biden was supposed to become the candidate of the Democratic Party of the United States. The 81-year-old politician won almost all the internal elections of the party, including the primaries and conventions held from January to June 2024. However, on June 27, Biden failed miserably in a televised debate with Donald Trump, after which many prominent members of the Democratic Party of the United States publicly and behind the scenes called on Biden to refuse to participate in the elections. Having succumbed to their pressure, on July 21, the US President announced that he would not run for re-election. Thus, Biden became the eighth president in US history to refuse re-election.
At that point, there were only 107 days left before the election. This was a record short time. Accordingly, Lyndon Johnson announced his withdrawal 219 days before the election, Harry Truman - 220 days before the election, and Calvin Coolidge - 462 days before the election.
The election will also mark the first time since 1976 that neither Biden nor members of the Bush and Clinton political teams are running for a major party nomination, Axios noted. That's because George H. W. Bush ran as the Republican vice presidential nominee in 1980 and 1984, and as the presidential nominee in 1988 and 1992. He lost to Democratic nominee Bill Clinton in 1992, who won reelection in 1996. George W. Bush won the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
In 2008 and 2012, Joe Biden successfully ran for vice president alongside Barack Obama. In 2016, Bill Clinton's wife, Hillary, announced her candidacy for the presidency. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden's name appeared on the ballot again as a candidate for the presidency of the United States.
So this year, for the first time in nearly half a century, none of the three names – Biden, Clinton and Bush – will appear on the ballot.
At the same time, the head of another influential American political family, Robert Kennedy Jr., is running as an independent candidate (but with little support from his relatives). The last Kennedy to run for President of the United States was his father, Robert Kennedy Sr., but his name was never on the ballot. During the primaries in June 1968, the politician was shot by a Palestinian terrorist. Sirhan Sirhan. On August 23, 2024, Robert Kennedy Jr. announced that he was suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump. But Kennedy's name will remain on the ballot. Judging by the polls, he cannot count on any significant results.
According to the archives of the American Presidency Project, for the first time since 1980, there was only one televised debate between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates on the ballot. On Sept. 10, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris competed live from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, hosted by ABC. Polls showed the Democratic candidate leading, but Trump declared victory and declined to hold further televised confrontations.
The Republican Party also held a debate with Biden on June 27 (both politicians were not officially nominated as US presidential candidates at that time), but the incumbent president later withdrew from the race. For comparison, Trump debated Hillary Clinton three times in 2016. There were also three televised battles between Democratic and Republican candidates in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012. 1984, 1988, 2020 – 2 each. During the 1980 presidential election, Republican Ronald Reagan debated independent candidate John Anderson on September 21 and Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter on October 28.
During the presidential election, Donald Trump was the target of three assassination attempts. On July 13, while he was speaking at a campaign rally in the small town of Butler, Pennsylvania, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, hiding on the roof of a nearby building, opened fire on him with a rifle. The Republican was saved by the fact that at the moment of the shooting, he turned to a screen with data on illegal immigration to the United States, and the bullet only grazed his right ear. Secret Service agents eliminated the shooter, but one member of the audience was killed in the shootout. President Trump, who was leaving the stage surrounded by security guards, raised his fist high and shouted to his supporters: “Fight, fight, fight!”
On September 15, while Trump was playing golf with a campaign donor at his Florida golf club, Secret Service agents found the barrel of an AK-47 rifle lodged in a chain-link fence. The agents opened fire on the man holding the weapon, but he fled, abandoning the weapon in the bushes. He was later identified from surveillance footage and detained. It turned out that Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, had repeatedly visited Kyiv, trying to recruit volunteers from the United States and even Afghanistan to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (Ukraine).
On October 12, police also arrested an armed Nevada man, 49-year-old Wham Miller, outside a Trump campaign rally in Coachella, California. In addition to a loaded gun, police found Miller in possession of several passports under different names and an unregistered car with fake license plates, local Sheriff Chad Bianco said. Bianco suggested his men may have foiled a third assassination attempt on Trump. However, the suspect was released on bail.
Trump is also the oldest candidate in presidential election history. If he wins, he will become the oldest politician ever to hold the U.S. presidency. He turned 78 on June 14, and on January 20, 2025, he will be five months older than Joe Biden was when he took office. The White House four years ago.
At the same time, the Republican himself does not consider his age a hindrance and claims that he copes well with all cognitive tests and is in perfect physical shape. “Bernie Marcus is 95 years old, he is the founder of Home Depot. Talk to him and you will see that he has the same sharp mind as before. <...> I know many people over 80 years old. I know people over 80 years old who do not want to leave [their position] in the family company and do not want their children to take their place. More capable than their descendants. I know both. So I will not have a problem [because of my age],” Trump said at a meeting with the Economic Club of Chicago on October 15.
...found guilty but not convicted.
If Trump is elected, old age won’t be his only problem. Three weeks after the general election, on November 26, Republicans will be sentenced in the Stormy Daniels case. On May 30, a jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying the Trump Organization’s financial records to hide money from the porn star in 2006 in exchange for keeping quiet about his intimate relationship with the convicted man.
The court had originally planned to decide on a sentence in July, but decided to postpone sentencing until after the presidential election. Each charge carries a maximum prison term of four years, with the maximum prison term for a former president being 136 years. However, it is unlikely that Trump will go to prison, as this is the first time a politician has been charged with a non-violent crime. Based on court history, Trump will likely be fined, suspended from office, or at best placed under house arrest.
Either way, if he wins the election, the Republican will take office with a criminal record. He will not be able to pardon himself. The president has that power only for people who have committed federal crimes, and Trump was convicted of violating New York state law. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul could pardon him under the letter of the law, but that is unlikely.