On November 5th Americans will go to the polls to elect their next president. The contest will feel familiar: the main two candidates are the same as in 2020. Joe Biden, the incumbent, faced no viable competition for the Democratic nomination. His predecessor in office, Donald Trump, easily saw off a crowded field in the Republican primary. This will be the first rematch election in almost 70 years. After Mr Trump lost the previous election, his supporters tried to overturn the result. He faces federal charges over his alleged participation in that scheme, as well as three other criminal cases. On May 30th, in his first criminal trial, Mr Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Never before has a former American president been convicted of a crime. Mr Biden’s presidency, meanwhile, has been defined by high inflation, big industrial-policy bills and turmoil abroad, in Afghanistan, Ukraine and the Middle East. Both men are unpopular. The election will be less a popularity contest than a referendum on which man Americans think is the least bad option.The Economist is tracking the contest. Here you can find the latest polls, though it should be noted that pre-election polls have limited predictive power for the final result until the end of the summer in an election year. Explore how a hypothetical voter might cast a ballot with our interactive build-a-voter model. And if you are interested in contests elsewhere, see our British election tracker, our European elections poll tracker and more at our election tracker hub.
