A survey conducted in February 2025 found that the most important issue for 24 percent of Americans was inflation and prices. A further 12 percent of respondents were most concerned about jobs and the economy.

According to a survey from late December 2024, the two most important issues among Republican voters in the United States were inflation and immigration, with 25 and 22 percent ranking it their primary political concerns respectively. In contrast, only two percent of Democrats considered immigration their most important issue. Inflation and healthcare were the leading issues among democrats in the U.S.

When considering who to vote for in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, the economy was the most important issue for more than half of Republicans, compared to only 14 percent of Democrats. Preserving democracy was the most important issue among Democrats when deciding who to vote for.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, roughly 90 percent of voters who considered the economy their most important issue voted for Donald Trump. In comparison, 74 percent of those who considered abortion their most important issue voted for Kamala Harris.

According to a 2023 survey, inflation and gas prices were the most important issues for Gen Z and Millennial voters in the United States. Additionally, nearly one-third of voters between 18 and 34 years old considered abortion a top political issue heading into the 2024 election.

In December 2024, 11 percent of survey respondents said that the most important problem facing the United States was the high cost of living and inflation. Another 20percent said that the government and poor leadership was the most serious concern for the nation.

According to an October 2024 survey, young Americans were much more likely to vote for Kamala Harris in the November 2024 presidential elections. Of those between the ages of 18 and 29, 60 percent said they were planning on voting for Harris, compared to 33 percent who said they planned on voting for Trump. In contrast, Trump was much more popular among those between 45 and 64 years old.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, almost two-thirds of voters who had never attended college reported voting for Donald Trump. In comparison, a similar share of voters with advanced degrees reported voting for Kamala Harris.

According to results on November 6, 2024, former President Donald Trump had received 277 Electoral College votes in the race to become the next President of the United States, securing him the presidency. With all states counted, Trump received a total of 312 electoral votes.

Candidates need 270 votes to become the next President of the United States.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, roughly 87 percent of voters who considered the condition of the nation's economy poor voted for Donald Trump. In comparison, 91 percent of those who considered the state of the economy good reported voting for Kamala Harris.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, 46 percent of voters with a 2023 household income of 30,000 U.S. dollars or less reported voting for Donald Trump. In comparison, 51 percent of voters with a total family income of 100,000 to 199,999 U.S. dollars reported voting for Kamala Harris.

According to exit polling in ten key states of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, 63 percent of Protestant Christian voters reported voting for Donald Trump. In comparison, only 22 percent of Jewish voters reported voting for Trump.

According to a survey conducted in December 2024, around 39 percent of Americans had a very unfavorable view of Donald Trump, while 30 percent of Americans held a very favorable view. Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in November 2024. The former president will be sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2025. Shifting perceptions of trustworthiness Despite the significant portion of Americans who view Trump unfavorably, his perceived trustworthiness has shown improvement over time. A September 2024 survey found that 41 percent of registered voters considered Trump honest and trustworthy, marking an increase from 38 percent in 2016. Policy proposals and partisan support Trump's policy proposals have continued to garner strong support from his Republican base while facing opposition from Democrats. An August 2024 survey showed roughly 85 percent of Republicans backing Trump's plan to arrest and deport thousands of illegal immigrants, compared to only 22 percent of Democrats. This stark partisan divide on key policy issues reflects the broader polarization in Trump's favorability ratings.

Every four years in the United States, the electoral college system is used to determine the winner of the presidential election. In this system, each state has a fixed number of electors based on their population size, and (generally speaking) these electors then vote for their candidate with the most popular votes within their state or district. Since 1964, there have been 538 electoral votes available for presidential candidates, who need a minimum of 270 votes to win the election. Because of this system, candidates do not have to win over fifty percent of the popular votes across the country, but just win in enough states to receive a total of 270 electoral college votes. The use of this system is a source of debate in the U.S.; those in favor claim that it prevents candidates from focusing on the interests of urban populations, and must also appeal to smaller and less-populous states, and they say that this system preserves federalism and the two-party system. However, critics argue that this system does not represent the will of the majority of American voters, and that it encourages candidates to disproportionally focus on winning in swing states, where the outcome is more difficult to predict. Popular results From 1789 until 1820, there was no popular vote, and the President was then chosen only by the electors from each state. George Washington was unanimously voted for by the electorate, receiving one hundred percent of the votes in both elections. From 1824, the popular vote has been conducted among American citizens, to help electors decide who to vote for (although the 1824 winner was chosen by the House of Representatives, as no candidate received over fifty percent of electoral votes). Since 1924, the difference in the share of both votes has varied, with several candidates receiving over ninety percent of the electoral votes while only receiving between fifty and sixty percent of the popular vote. The highest difference was for Ronald Reagan in 1980, where he received just 50.4 percent of the popular vote, but 90.9 percent of the electoral votes. Unpopular winners Since 1824, there have been 49 elections, and in 18 of these the winner did not receive over fifty percent of the popular vote. In the majority of these cases, the winner did receive a plurality of the votes, however there have been five instances where the winner of the electoral college vote lost the popular vote to another candidate. The most recent examples of this were in 2000, when George W. Bush received roughly half a million fewer votes than Al Gore, and in 2016, where Hillary Clinton won approximately three million more votes than Donald Trump.

Following Joe Biden's withdrawal from his presidential campaign showed former President Donald Trump having an advantage in a number of swing states. However, the weeks that followed showed support for Harris increasing across multiple key states. As of November, Trump was ahead of Harris in Georgia, securing support from 48.3 percent of registered voters surveyed, compared to support for Harris sitting at 46.9 percent.

Although it is not a requirement, the concession speech of the losing candidate has become a customary element of each U.S. presidential election. It is seen as a sign of acceptance by the losing candidate, and signals the peaceful transfer of power in cases where the incumbent president has lost re-election. As a courtesy, the winning candidate usually waits for the loser to make their concession speech before claiming victory. In the majority of cases, the concession came on either election day or the day following the election (often in the early hours of the morning); although in 2000 it took 36 days for the loser to concede. Yet, these customs have not been adhered to in recent elections, where the fallout from the 2020 election saw Donald Trump become the first major party candidate to not concede defeat in over ninety years, whereas in 2024, Trump publicly claimed victory before Kamala Harris' concession call. Concession methods change with the times In 1896, William Jennings Bryan began the tradition of publicly conceding the election by sending a courtesy telegram to his opponent, William McKinley. From 1896 until 1972, losing candidates generally sent a private concession telegram to their opponent, before the telegram was replaced by a customary phone call in 1976. In addition to these personal messages, televised speeches also became the norm from 1952 onwards, when Adlai Stevenson conceded to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Between 1928 and 1948, some candidates also conceded via a radio address (Thomas E. Dewey did so without privately conceding in 1944), while Wendell Wilkie's concession speech in 1940 was publicly broadcast in movie theaters. 2000 controversy On election day in 2000, the early results were signaling a victory for George W. Bush, and Al Gore called his opponent and privately conceded the election; however, before Gore could concede publicly, later counts brought the nationwide results closer and he withdrew his concession. Eventually, the electoral college result was to be decided in Florida, where Bush was leading, yet the count was so close that it triggered an automatic recount. Following a month-long process of recounts and court cases, it was declared that Bush won Florida by a margin of just 537 votes with almost six million votes cast. Al Gore officially conceded 36 days after election day. 2020 controversy In contrast to 2000, in the 2020 election, Joe Biden received over seven million more popular votes than his opponent (no individual state was won by a margin of fewer than 10,000 votes), and secured 306 electoral votes, which were cast at each state's meeting of electors in December without irregularities. Despite all of this, President Trump spent the remainder of his term claiming victory, and that the election had been stolen through widespread voter and election fraud. Neither the President nor his legal team provided any evidence of these claims, and all appeals to overturn the results were rejected by the courts. On January 6, Congress convened to certify the election results; at the same time, Trump gave a speech encouraging his supporters to march upon the Capitol building, which led to them storming and vandalizing the building. Five people died in connection with this. After the rioters were dispersed, Congress reconvened and certified the results. The following week, Trump was impeached for the second time. Joe Biden became President on January 20th, while Donald Trump left office without publicly accepting the results of the 2020 election.

The U.S. presidential election has been contested in Alaska on 17 occasions since 1960, and Alaska has successfully voted for the winning candidate in 10 of these elections, giving an overall success rate of 59 percent. In these 17 elections, Alaska has always voted for a major party candidate and voted for the Republican candidate 16 times; the only time where Alaska voted for a Democrat nominee was in the 1964 election, where Republican nominee, Barry M. Goldwater, failed to gain the support of his party during the election campaign. Since being admitted to the union in 1959, Alaska's designated number of electoral college votes has remained at three per election, which is the joint-lowest number of any state. No U.S. president or major party candidate has ever come from Alaska, although the state's former Governor, Sarah Palin, ran as John McCain's vice presidential nominee in the 2008 election.

According to a survey conducted just over a month after her defeat in the 2024 presidential election, approximately 44 percent of surveyed Americans had a favorable opinion of Vice President Harris. Of those, 25 percent had a very favorable opinion of Harris.

The most popular online news brands in the United States as of February 2024 were Fox News online and CNN.com. A study found that 18 percent and 17 percent of respondents to a survey had visited those sites respectively for news in the last week. Also high in the ranking were Yahoo! News and The New York Times online. Support for and trust in both sources varies significantly according to the political affiliation of audiences, particularly among Democrats and Republicans. News and politics A survey revealed that more than 40 percent of Republicans reported not trusting The New York Times, whereas The NYT is one of the most trusted news sources among Democrats. The same study found that over 60 percent of Democrats did not trust Fox News**. The perceived credibility of major news sources in the United States changes annually and is often influenced by election campaigns and the voting persuasions of the American public. However, whilst most Democrats believe the mass media to be objective in its reporting, very few Republicans feel the same. In 2020, just 10 percent of Republicans trusted news organizations to report fully, accurately, and fairly. Trust in news The most trusted news sources in the United States are radio, network news, and newspapers, despite online outlets being used more frequently by younger audiences. Social media and podcasts are considered the least trustworthy news platforms by all American voters, though again, the survey indicated that Republicans are generally more distrusting of mass media news than voters of other political parties.

The District of Columbia is the only non-state entity of the United States with a share of electoral votes in U.S. presidential elections. Since the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted Washington D.C. representation in these elections, the nation's capital has had three electoral votes in each election since 1964. In these 16 elections, Washington D.C.'s citizens have chosen the overall winner seven times, giving a success rate of 44 percent, which is the lowest in the country. As of 2024, no U.S. president has ever been born in Washington D.C., although former Vice President and Democratic nominee in the 2000 election, Al Gore, is the only major party candidate to have been born there, during his father's term in the House of Representatives. Always Democratic The District of Columbia has voted for the Democratic Party's nominee in every presidential election that has been contested in the capital. Not only do Democratic nominees perform well in D.C., they win these electoral votes by significant margins; Democrats have won over ninety percent of D.C.'s popular vote in the past four elections, and the worst performance ever by a Democrat was in 1980, where Jimmy Carter only won 75 percent of the popular vote. Factors such as heavy urbanization and ethnic diversity are generally cited as the reasons for D.C.'s strong Democrat voter base. Fifty-first state? The only time when a Democratic nominee did not receive all three electoral votes was in 2000, when one elector abstained from casting her ballot, as a protest of D.C.'s lack of voting representation in Congress. While the District of Columbia can take part in presidential elections, it is a federal district under Congress' jurisdiction, and does not have voting representation in either chamber of Congress. The statehood movement aims to make Washington D.C. the newest state to join the union, possibly under the name "New Columbia" or "Washington, Douglass Commonwealth" (named after the abolitionist, Frederick Douglass), and bring an end to what it sees as "taxation without representation". Generally speaking, lawmakers are split along party lines on whether D.C. should receive statehood or not; with Democrats in favor of the proposition, while Republicans are opposed to the idea (as it would likely bolster the Democrat's numbers in Congress). A survey conducted in June 2020, showed that roughly 40 percent of registered voters support the idea of D.C. statehood, while 41 percent oppose the idea, and the remainder are undecided; the topic gained renewed attention in 2020 when President Trump used the capital's National Guard to disperse peaceful protesters from near the White House during the George Floyd protests.