Whatever way you look at it, the 2024 presidential election has been a groundbreaking one. Whether Vice President Harris or former President Donald Trump wins, it will also have historic results.
Let’s take a look at what history is being made with this election.
Modern history firsts and high costs
While current President Joe Biden isn’t the first candidate to drop out of a presidential race, he is the first presumptive nominee to exit since the modern primary process was developed in the 1970s, according to ABC News. Biden dropped out of the race after trailing Trump at the polls and a widely criticized performance during their presidential debate.
Another aspect of this election cycle that makes it stand out compared to others was its length. Per the Pew Research Center, the primary season was the shortest in the modern political era.
Even though Trump refused to participate in debates with other candidates from the Republican party during the primaries, he easily secured enough primary votes to get the nomination. On the Democratic side, Biden dropped out after the primaries were over, and Harris was selected during the Democratic National Convention.
Last month, Open Secrets also said it expected the 2024 federal election cycle to be the most expensive in history. Overall, it predicted total spending to come in at nearly $16 billion, around $1 billion more than the 2020 election cycle.
Firsts if Trump wins
During the years since he lost the 2020 election to Biden, Trump has already made some history.
This May, be became the first president to ever be criminally convicted, and would be the first person with a criminal conviction on their record to be elected. He faces other criminal charges as well, but he might be able to get out of them if he scores another term in the White House. Trump would also be the first president elected who has already been impeached twice, said PBS.
If he wins the election, Trump, 78, will replace Biden as the oldest person elected to the nation’s highest office. Biden was 78 when he was inaugurated in January 2021 but he was still 77 when he won the election in November 2020.
Trump would be the second president in history to serve non-consecutive terms if he wins. President Grover Cleveland was the first – he served from 1885 to 1889 and then from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland won the popular vote when he ran in 1888 but President Benjamin Harrison won the Electoral College. Though Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton due to the Electoral College, he has not yet won the popular vote.
Firsts if Harris wins
With the unusual nature of this election cycle, Harris has already made history as the candidate with the shortest presidential campaign.
A longtime California prosecutor, Harris would be the second president born in that state (the first was President Richard M. Nixon). She would also be the first from Oakland, Calif., since Nixon was from Yorba Linda.
If the vice president wins, she would become the first woman and first South Asian person elected as president in the U.S. She would also become the second Black American to hold the office, after former President Barack Obama. When Harris was elected as vice president in 2020, she became the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to hold the position.
America would also have its first president who is an alumnus of Howard University – a prestigious member of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities – if Harris wins. She graduated from the Washington D.C. school in 1986 and was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Harris is spending election night at her alma mater.
Harris would be the first woman elected as president if she wins, but she’s actually already held that power, albeit briefly, when the president had a colonoscopy in 2021. During a speech at Howard that year, Biden even slipped up and called her “President Harris.”
Head to Audacy Election Central for the latest results.