Two Republican candidates are jostling to be their party’s presidential nominee for the 2024 general election, while President Joe Biden is effectively the Democratic Party’s nominee. Several third-party hopefuls have also joined the fray.
Here is a list of the candidates.
DONALD TRUMP
Trump has leveraged his civil cases and indictments in four separate criminal cases – unprecedented for a former American president – to boost his popularity among Republicans and raise funds, helping to make him the Republican frontrunner with 64% in the latest Reuters/Ipsos polling and victories in the first two nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. He is also poised to secure Nevada’s delegates.
Trump, 77, has called the indictments a political witch hunt to thwart his pursuit of a second four-year term, an assertion that the Justice Department has denied. He also faces a legal challenge that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court regarding his eligibility for the ballot following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. If elected again, Trump has vowed revenge against his perceived enemies and has adopted increasingly authoritarian language, including saying he would not be a dictator, except “on day one.” He has promised other sweeping changes, including gutting the federal civil service to install loyalists and imposing tougher immigration policies such as mass deportations and ending birthright citizenship. He has also promised to eliminate Obamacare health insurance and impose harsher curbs on trade with China.
NIKKI HALEY
A former South Carolina governor and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, Haley, 52, has emphasized her relative youth compared to Biden, 81, and Trump, as well as her background as the daughter of Indian immigrants. She had gained a reputation in the Republican Party as a solid conservative who has the ability to address issues of gender and race in a more credible fashion than many of her peers.
But Trump has increasingly targeted her, including racist attacks on her ethnicity and amplifying false claims about her eligibility for the White House despite her birth in South Carolina. Haley, who drew 19% support among Republicans in the Reuters/Ipsos survey, has sharpened her attacks on Trump following New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 contest and raised $1 million after Trump threatened her donors. She has also pitched herself as a stalwart defender of American interests abroad, citing Trump’s praise of dictators, and ramped up her argument that Trump is too chaotic, old and divisive to be effective. She has suggested she will stay in the race past the Feb. 24 primary in her home state, where opinion polls show she trails Trump.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY
JOE BIDEN
Biden, already the oldest U.S. president ever, will have to convince voters he has the stamina for another four years in office, amid concerns about his age and poor approval ratings. Biden allies say he believes he is the only Democratic candidate who can defeat Trump but the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll put President Biden on 34%, while Trump garnered 40%. In announcing his candidacy, Biden declared it was his job to defend American democracy, and referred to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. Vice President Kamala Harris is again his running mate. The economy will factor in his reelection campaign. While the U.S. escaped an anticipated recession and is growing faster than economists expected, inflation hit 40-year highs in 2022 and the cost of essentials is weighing on voters.
Biden has led the response of Western governments to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, persuading allies to sanction Moscow and support Kyiv, and he has been supportive of Israel in its conflict with Hamas militants in Gaza.However, he has faced mounting criticism from some within his party for failing to back calls for a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory, where Gaza health officials say more than 27,500 people have been killed, thousands of buildings have been damaged or destroyed and residents have insufficient food, water and medical supplies. At home, he has pushed through massive economic stimulus and infrastructure spending packages to boost U.S. industrial output, although he has received little recognition from voters for the latter. Biden’s handling of immigration policy has been criticized by Republicans and Democrats as migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border hit record highs during his administration. In the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating contests, a write-in campaign helped Biden easily win the New Hampshire primary, where his name was not on the January ballot due to a disagreement over the timing, and he scored an overwhelming victory in South Carolina in February.
DEAN PHILLIPS
Phillips, a little-known U.S. congressman from Minnesota, announced in October that he would mount a long-shot challenge to Biden because he does not believe the president can win another term. The 55-year-old millionaire businessman and gelato company co-founder announced his bid in a one-minute video posted online, saying: “We’ve got some challenges. … We’re going to repair this economy, and we are going to repair America.” Phillips failed to win any delegates in South Carolina, where he received just 2% of the vote. But he did better in New Hampshire, garnering 20% and coming in second.
INDEPENDENTS
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR An anti-vaccine activist, Kennedy, 70, is running as an independent after initially challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination, but he is far behind in polling. Some recent Reuters/Ipsos polls show that Kennedy could harm Biden more than Trump in the presidential election, where third-party candidates have affected the outcome of U.S. elections even without winning. Trump’s six-percentage point lead over Biden in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll held even when respondents were given the option of voting for third-party candidates, including Kennedy, whose support stood at 8%. Kennedy is the son of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 during his own presidential bid. Kennedy was banned from Instagram for spreading misinformation about vaccines and the COVID-19 pandemic but was later reinstated. He lost a legal bid to force YouTube owner Google to reinstate videos of him questioning the safety of COVID vaccines.
CORNEL WEST
The political activist, philosopher and academic said in June he would launch a third-party bid for president that is likely to appeal to progressive, Democratic-leaning voters. West, 70, initially ran as a Green Party candidate, but in October he said people “want good policies over partisan politics” and announced his bid as an independent. He has promised to end poverty and guarantee housing.
JILL STEIN
Jill Stein, a physician, re-upped her 2016 Green Party bid on Nov. 9, accusing Democrats of betraying their promises “for working people, youth and the climate again and again – while Republicans don’t even make such promises in the first place.”
Stein, 73, raised millions of dollars for recounts after Trump’s surprise 2016 victory. Her allegations yielded only one electoral review in Wisconsin, which showed Trump had won.