On November 5, US voters will participate in general elections. Under pressure from his own party, President Joseph Biden announced in late July that he would step down as the Democratic Party presidential candidate. Vice President Kamala Harris was expected to secure the party’s nomination at its national convention in August, and has named Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate. Former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, secured the Republican Party nomination earlier in July. Independent and third-party candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Green Party’s Jill Stein, are set to appear on the ballot in over 25 states. The US president is formally chosen by the Electoral College, whose 538 electors are apportioned to each state based on the size of its congressional representation; the District of Columbia receives three electors. That district and 48 of the 50 states assign all their electors to the winner of their overall popular votes; Maine and Nebraska distribute electors based on popular-vote victories in each congressional district. In addition to a president and vice president, US voters will elect all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 34 members of the 100-seat Senate, as well as numerous state-level governors, legislators, secretaries of state, and attorneys general.

In mid-July, former president Trump survived an assassination attempt while speaking at a rally, raising fresh concerns about political violence as a threat to the democratic process.  The gunman was killed, and law enforcement investigators had yet to establish a motive for the attempt at the time of writing. Research from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes that political violence in the United States—spanning attacks on politicians, hate crimes against marginalized groups, and mass shootings by ideologically motivated perpetrators—appears to be on the rise and may be linked to increases in dehumanizing rhetoric and the normalization of violence in American political discourse. Support for political violence cuts across political ideologies and partisan affiliations, though perpetrators of premeditated violent acts in recent years have much more commonly expressed right-wing views.

This assessment was last updated August 7, 2024.

Recent polling indicates that party affiliation shapes US adults’ views on most key electoral issues, which include inflation, immigration, gun violence, and the opioid crisis. A Pew Research Center poll in July 2024 found that registered voters were “highly critical” of the presidential campaign, reporting concerns about the mental fitness of President Biden—prior to his withdrawal—and the ethical standards of former president Trump.

Trump’s conduct during his previous campaigns and term in office has featured prominently in coverage of the race. In May 2024, a New York jury convicted him of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, all as part of an effort to suppress reports of an extramarital affair during his 2016 presidential campaign. Sentencing was postponed until September, and an appeal of the verdict was pending. Trump remains eligible for the presidency despite the conviction and faces dozens of other felony charges in three separate cases, including for his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the November 2020 presidential election and his actions surrounding the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol. In July, the Supreme Court granted presidents either absolute or presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts, weakening protections against abuse of power and providing Trump with additional grounds on which to challenge the charges against him. In March, the court had ruled that states could not disqualify the former president from the ballot due to his alleged role in the January 2021 attack, reversing a previous ruling by Colorado’s highest court based on the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which excludes people who have “engaged in insurrection” from serving as “an officer of the United States.”

Election denialism is a major concern ahead of the 2024 balloting. Former president Trump, some members of Congress, and their supporters continue to promote the false claim that Trump won the 2020 election. The narrative had fueled the January 2021 attack on the Capitol and has been widely disproven in state and federal courts. Dozens of officials who denied the results of the 2020 presidential election, whether in public rhetoric or by attempting to undermine the certification of the results, are running for reelection in 2024. Several prominent Republicans, including Trump, have publicly refused to commit to accepting November’s election results. False and conspiracist narratives continue to be amplified online and off, such as claims about noncitizens voting in federal elections that have been widely disproven; even a Trump-appointed commission was disbanded in 2018 after it found no evidence of noncitizen voting in the 2016 presidential election.

The effort to protect election integrity has itself become politicized. In early 2024, the Republican National Committee filed lawsuits contesting voter rolls and election administration in several swing states in the name of protecting election integrity; election law experts interviewed by the Associated Press warned that such litigation was often poorly evidenced and unlikely to succeed but could nonetheless sow doubt among the electorate about the outcome of the 2024 elections. Analysis from the Washington Post found that new rules on voting procedures have been imposed in many swing states, noting that some Republican state officials have advocated for changes to law in the name of election integrity that would ultimately prove restrictive to voting.

Election officials continue to face harassment and threats, often coupled with false or inflammatory claims alleging manipulation of the 2020 presidential election. Thirty-eight percent of local election officials reported experiencing harassment, abuse, or threats related to their work in a survey conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice in spring 2024; 70 percent reported an increase in threats since 2020. Such harassment contributes to the loss of experienced personnel and erodes the technical capacity necessary for administering the 2024 elections. A case study from the nonpartisan organization Issue One found that more than 160 local election officials across 11 states had left their roles between November 2020 and September 2023. A Bipartisan Policy Center report similarly found that attrition is a nationwide challenge, citing a 38 percent increase in turnover from 2004 to 2022.

Despite these trends, US elections continue to be generally free and fair. Recent work to safeguard election integrity may improve resilience in the face of false challenges to election results in 2024. For example, a bipartisan group of federal legislators amended the Electoral Count Act in late 2022 to remove ambiguities that nearly disrupted the presidential election certification process on January 6, 2021. During the 2022 midterms, voters in several states rejected election denialists who ran for secretary of state, an office that plays an important role in election administration.

The United States has a score of 78 out of 100 on Freedom House’s Election Vulnerability Index, with 100 representing the strongest defenses against digital election interference. The US score reflects a robust electoral system, though it has been strained by problems with past elections and an online environment that is vulnerable to manipulation.

Freedom House has identified the following as key digital interference issues to watch ahead of election day:

• Information manipulation: False, misleading, and conspiracist information, particularly that which is spread by domestic actors, shapes the political realities of an increasing number of Americans and is a persistent problem ahead of the 2024 elections. Early research indicates that misleading narratives from 2020 and 2022 remain prominent this year, including false claims about voter fraud. These views are entrenched in a large segment of the electorate: in a December 2023 poll, almost 70 percent of Republicans indicated belief in the conspiracy theory that the results of the 2020 presidential election were illegitimate, an increase from about 60 percent in 2021. Emergent narratives in 2024 emphasize fears of noncitizen voting, such as the widespread falsehood that the Biden administration has secretly flown in migrants from Latin America to vote illegally.
  
  In addition, US national security and cybersecurity agencies have warned about the ongoing threat of influence operations by foreign actors, including the governments of Russia, China, and Iran. Microsoft identified Russia-linked information operations that sought to falsely represent US people expressing anti-Ukraine sentiment, as well as China-linked operations targeting social cleavages within the United States. OpenAI disclosed in May 2024 that it had blocked operations in which actors linked to the Russian and Israeli governments sought to generate content to influence US audiences about domestic politics. Concerns that audio and video enhanced or generated by artificial intelligence tools will mislead voters have prompted attention from government officials and cybersecurity experts, though early examples have largely been trivial, and the content’s wider impact remains unclear.
  
  Serious concerns have emerged about the United States’ ability to resist and respond to false and misleading information. A barrage of highly politicized lawsuits, subpoenas, and online harassment has targeted several independent researchers and institutions that are dedicated to detecting and countering false and misleading content. For example, the Washington Post found that a House subcommittee had disproportionately targeted the Election Integrity Project (EIP), a coalition of academic researchers, for investigation. The subcommittee accused the EIP, formed in 2020 to conduct real-time analysis of and notify social media companies about false electoral information, of facilitating government censorship. In addition, the plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri, a lawsuit that faced a major setback when the Supreme Court returned it to the lower courts in June 2024, sought to limit the federal government’s ability to share information with social media platforms, including about influence operations, on the grounds that it amounted to government censorship. The Supreme Court noted that private efforts such as the EIP did not constitute government censorship. The cost and burden of compliance with lawsuits and subpoenas, alongside the immense personal toll of online harassment, have chilled independent research and analysis on information integrity in the United States; in June 2024, for example, Stanford University shut down its internet abuse research hub, a participant in the EIP.
• Political violence and intimidation: Online intimidation and harassment aimed at elected officials remain common, and the elections may act as a flashpoint for political violence. Beyond the attempted assassination of former president Trump, US politicians, from prominent members of Congress to local officeholders, face increasing threats of violence, including over social media. Platforms like Telegram and Gab, which moderate user-generated content lightly, are a breeding ground for extreme political views. A Reuters review of political violence since January 2021 found that 12 of 15 perpetrators of far-right violence had researched, promoted, or been radicalized by conspiracy theories online; all embraced some mixture of antisemitic, racist, homophobic, or antigovernment theories.
• Cyberattacks: US election infrastructure is generally robust, secure, and resistant to interference, and several federal and state programs have worked to strengthen electoral systems’ reliability and provide them with more resources for cybersecurity. In 2017, the US government designated election infrastructure as “critical infrastructure,” making it a high priority for federal assistance. However, cybersecurity experts have cited the need to update outdated technology. For instance, a report from the Brennan Center for Justice found that people in 31 states will vote in the 2024 elections on equipment that is at least a decade old. The R Street Institute similarly warned in 2022 that voting equipment was outdated. Compared with other forms of election infrastructure, websites that provide crucial information to voters may be more vulnerable. Analysis from the cybersecurity company Cloudflare noted an escalation in attacks on campaign websites and state and local government election websites ahead of election day in 2022. Notably, however, the US intelligence community report on the 2022 elections found no evidence of foreign state-backed attempts to tamper with election infrastructure.

The United States is rated Free in Freedom in the World 2024, with a score of 83 out of 100 with respect to its political rights and civil liberties, and Free in Freedom on the Net 2023, with a score of 76 out of 100. To learn more, please visit the United States country reports for Freedom in the World and Freedom on the Net and Freedom House’s United States country portal.