According to polls, the most important issues for voters were the economy,[31] healthcare,[32] democracy,[33][34] foreign policy (notably U.S. support for Israel and for Ukraine),[35] illegal immigration,[36][37] abortion,[38][39][40] and climate change.

[94] As early as April 1, 2024, The New York Times reported that the Chinese government had created fake pro-Trump accounts on social media "promoting conspiracy theories, stoking domestic divisions and attacking President Biden ahead of the election in November".

[96][97] On September 4, 2024, the United States publicly accused Russia of interfering in the 2024 election and announced several steps to combat Russian influence including sanctions, indictments, and seizing of web domains used to spread propaganda and disinformation.

[98] Iran was identified as interfering with the 2024 presidential election through front companies connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and hacking attempts against the Trump, Biden, and Harris campaigns starting as early as May 2024.

Prior to the fires, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security had issued a bulletin raising concerns that "election-related grievances" could motivate domestic extremist activity and that ballot drop boxes could potentially be "attractive targets".

[302][303] The New York Times reported that Trump was considering "an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration", such as "preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled".

[300] Trump stated his intention to deport 11 million people through the construction of detention camps and deploy the military,[279] relying on presidential wartime powers under the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act.

[302] Other rhetoric includes false statements that foreign leaders are deliberately emptying insane asylums to send "prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients, terrorists" across the southern border as migrants,[319] that they are "building an army" of "fighting age" men to attack Americans "from within",[320] and are the "enemy from within" who are ruining the "fabric" of the country.

[d] Trump said his political opponents are a greater threat to the United States than countries such as Russia, China, and North Korea,[168][356] and urged deploying the military on American soil to fight "the enemy from within", which he describes as "radical left lunatics" and Democratic politicians such as Adam Schiff.

[370] The Wall Street Journal reported that economists found Trump's proposed policies created a greater risk of stoking inflation and generating higher budget deficits, relative to the Harris plan.

[384] Trump argued that keeping taxes low for the wealthy increases job creation,[385] and that these policies coupled with a crackdown in illegal immigration and reduction in inflation would help the middle class.

[398][399][400][401] In June 2024, 16 Nobel Prize in Economics laureates signed an open letter arguing that Trump's fiscal and trade policies coupled with efforts to limit the Federal Reserve's independence would reignite inflation in the United States.

[402][403][404] Moody's,[405] as well as most economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal in July 2024, predicted that inflation would be worse under Trump than Biden, a result due in part to tariffs, a crack down on illegal immigration, and larger deficits.

[472] Trump previously withdrew Title IX provisions that allowed transgender youth to have access to the bathrooms of their choice, and he attempted to roll-back several transgender-related policies in the Affordable Care Act.

[523][524][525] G. Elliott Morris and Kaleigh Rogers of ABC News' 538 argued that, although he had won the debate on policy, Biden had failed to reassure voters that he was capable of serving as president for another four years.

[644] Democrats performed better in the downballot races,[645][646] where they kept Republican margins extremely narrow in the House of Representatives and won Senate elections in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin despite Trump carrying those states.

[647][648] Post-election research by the Brookings Institution found that while Trump made inroads with minority voters, the Republican Party had "hardly" created a multiracial coalition, arguing that saying so was premature and that such support "could very well be a blip" based more on economic concerns.

Trump managed to gain another 2.5 million votes, mostly coming out of urban centers, but still garnering a couple hundred to thousands in rural and exurban counties across the Midwest, Northeast, Southeast and Mountain regions.

Fox News projected Trump as the winner at 1:47 a.m., while ABC, the Associated Press, CBS, CNN, and NBC all called the race around 5 a.m.[685] In a convention center in West Palm Beach, Florida, he was greeted with cheers by supporters, chanting, "USA!

In it, he acknowledged some positive changes achieved by Biden but said that they were "almost never discussed within the context of a grossly unfair economy that continues to fail ordinary Americans" and did not address the anger of the working class.

"[699] Former Republican president George W. Bush, who had declined to endorse either candidate, offered his congratulations to Trump and said that what he defined as a "strong turnout" in the election was a "sign of the health of our republic and the strength of our democratic institutions".

[700] Former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle released a statement admitting their "profound disagreements with the Republican ticket on a whole host of issues", and lauded Harris and Walz's efforts yet emphasized "recognizing that our point of view won't always win out, and being willing to accept the peaceful transfer of power" concerning the incoming Trump administration.

[707][708] American journalist and conspiracy theorist Wayne Madsen commented on Threads: "I'm beginning to believe our election was massively hacked just like happened a few weeks ago in the Republic of Georgia.

[713] Harris' loss to Trump received substantial media analysis, ranging from years of inflation and an earlier immigration crisis, to the global incumbency backlash, to Biden's exit seen as too late in the race, and the lack of an open primary, with Democrats and others arguing about what went wrong and how the party should move forward.

[731] Amy Walter, editor of the nonpartisan The Cook Political Report, also argued that the electoral environment was inherently difficult for Harris, because the top issue for voters was inflation during the Biden-Harris administration, for which Trump was viewed more favorably.

[752] In another Vox article, Andrew Prokop argued Harris suffered from a worldwide backlash to incumbents over inflation, as well as her struggles unifying the party over Gaza, failing to be a change candidate, and her difficulty in defending or abandoning positions she took during her 2020 presidential run.

"[475] NBC cited a Democratic strategist's appraisal of many men's concerns over feeling like "they're being left behind, that society doesn't have a place for them", and that this was a major factor in that demographic's role to return Trump to power.

The New York Times reported that such avenues "presented a way for Mr. Trump to sidestep more confrontational interviews with professional journalists, where he might face tough questions, fact-checks and detailed policy debates.

"[760] Observers also highlighted Trump's courting of the "manosphere",[761] a collection of what The Guardian described as "male podcasters, influencers and public figures" that "marketed themselves as free-thinking pundits who evaded the bounds of political classification".

[763] The New York Times reported that Trump's super PAC had joined a long list of presidential campaigns that made a "technological leap or innovation" while targeting key voters.