United States Presidential Election, 2024 (Scenario: Contingent Election))

The 2024 United States Presidential Election was the 60th quadrennial presidential election, held on November 5, 2020. Republican Donald Trump, Democrat Joe Biden and Independent Larry Hogan were the main contenders for the presidency. The result of the election was inconclusive, as no candidate won a majority of the electoral vote. As such, the U.S. House of Representatives, under the Twelfth Amendment, held a contingent election, resulting in Trump being elected the 47th President of the United States of America. The election has been characterised by some historians as "the most contentious in American history", serving as the boiling point of tensions between the Democratic and Republican parties. 
Biden, the incumbent President, secured renomination facing just token opposition. Despite initially lagging in polls behind popular Florida Governor Ron Desantis, Trump, who served as President from 2017 to 2021, clinched the Republican nomination in the hopes of winning a nonconsecutive second term after the failure of his first re-election bid in the 2020 election. Hogan, a former Republican Governor of Maryland, launched an Independent campaign that offered a centrist, libertarian alternative to Trump's far-right populism and Biden's social-democratic platform. The central issues during the campaign were the economy, particularly regarding an ongoing inflation crisis; contending approaches towards the Russo-Ukrainian conflict; the growing extremism of the Republican party; and the overturning of Roe vs Wade. 
With no candidates crossing the 270 electoral vote majority, the election was thrown to the House, which elected Trump President. The Democrat-controlled Senate re-elected Kamala Harris as Vice President. Trump and Harris would be sworn in on January 20 2025, although Harris would resign hours later, paving the way for Republican vice presidential nominee Ted Cruz's appointment as Vice President later that month. This outcome was highly controversial and sparked nationwide protests, especially considering Biden's sizeable lead in the popular vote and electoral college. This would culminate in a government shutdown in 2025, eventually forcing Trump and Congress to ratify the 28th Amendment, which abolished the electoral college, supplanting it with a nationwide ranked-choice popular vote system. Ultimately, this paved the way for the growing prevalence of third-party candidates, effectively ending the Democratic and Republican political duopoly. 
==Nominations==
===Democratic Party Nomination===
File:Joe Biden Presidential Photo.png|Joe Biden, President of the United States of America (nominee)
File:139px-Marianne Williamson - 33252886458 (cropped).jpg|Marianne Williamson, author
====Overview====
Biden launched his re-election campaign in December 2022, putting an end to rumours that he would only serve one term due to his old age. He won renomination with near-unanimous support from the Democratic establishment, although he faced a slight primary challenge from author Marianne-Williamson, who launched a single-issue campaign centred around the total elimination of America's nuclear arsenal. Williamson suspended her campaign prior to the Iowa caucus and endorsed Biden for the general election. 
He once again selected Kamala Harris, the incumbent Vice President, as his running mate. The Biden-Harris platform centered around stabilising the national economy through tax increases, particularly on the wealthy, as well as investing into healthcare and education. 
===Republican Party Nomination===
File:Donald Trump official portrait (cropped 2).jpg|Donald Trump, former President of the United States (nominee)
File:Ron DeSantis.jpg|Ron Desantis, Governor of Florida
File:Mike Pence official Vice Presidential portrait.jpg|Mike Pence, former Vice President of the United States
File:FrancisXSuarez.png|Francis X. Suarez, Mayor of Miami
File:Nikki Haley official photo.jpg|Nikki Haley, former Governor of South Carolina
File:LarryHogan.jpg|Larry Hogan, former Governor of Maryland
File:Asahutchinson.jpg|Asa Hutchinson, Governor of Arkansas
File:Chris Christie April 2015 (cropped).jpg|Chris Christie, former Governor of New Jersey
File:Liz Cheney.png|Liz Cheney, former U.S. Representative of Wyoming
====Overview====
The competitive Republican primaries reflected the steep ideological divides within the party, which were compounded following their underperformance in the 2022 midterm elections. Trump would face primary challenges from both his harshest critics within the GOP as well as from those ideologically adjacent to him, who believed that Trump's populist brand remained as popular as ever even in spite of the divisiveness and perceived inelectability of Trump himself. Ron Desantis, the popular Governor of Florida, would quickly eclipse Trump in polling and gained the backing of the Republican establishment. Ultimately, primary season would evolve into a three-way race between Trump, Desantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, who gained significant traction among the religious right. Trump surprised his detractors following sizeable victories in the New Hampshire and Nevada primaries, virtually tying Desantis on Super Tuesday and, following a bitter month-long primary contest with Desantis, securing the amount of delegates required for the nomination after a significant victory in the New York primary. 
Trump selected Ted Cruz, a Senator from Texas, as his running mate. Returning to the Make America Great Again slogan, Trump campaigned on instituting tax cuts on all income brackets, further cracking down on illegal immigration and adopting a more isolationist diplomatic approach towards geopolitical crises such as that between Russia and Ukraine as well as burgeoning tensions between China and Taiwan.
===Candidacy of Larry Hogan===
Hogan had initially run for the Republican nomination, and was able to consolidate support from the anti-Trump wing of the party especially after Liz Cheney suspended her campaign. However, an underperformance in the New Hampshire primary would force Hogan to exit the race. Following Trump's victory in the Republican primary, Hogan was reached out to by members of The Lincoln Project and Forward Party conservatives in the hopes of enlisting him as a third-party candidate. 
Despite initial reservations, Hogan launched his bid in May 2024, with former Congressman Adam Kinzinger as his running mate, citing concerns over the extremist MAGA movement as the reason behind his split from the GOP. The Hogan-Kinzinger platform largely consisted around electoral reform, seeking to introduce ranked-choice voting and elements of direct democracy on the national scale, as well as supporting states' rights regarding political issues such as abortion, education curriculums and gun control. Hogan would become the first third-party candidate to qualify for the presidential debates, participating in all three. In addition, Kinzinger participated in the vice-presidential debate. 
==Results==
Hogan's candidacy was considered a "spoiler", in that he drew votes away from both Trump and Biden, particularly in swing states where he drew a significant amount of support from the significant Independent voter base that had mostly broken for Biden in 2020, something attributed to his more moderate views on gun control and fracking. Hogan became the first third-party candidate since George Wallace in 1968 to carry a state and win electoral votes. In particular, Hogan's victories in the states of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Texas, Alaska, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were attributed to both dissatisfaction with Trump and concerns over Biden's energy policies (particularly his desire to ban fracking) and gun control measures. 
Biden performed well in Democratic strongholds, and won the swing states of Michigan, New Hampshire and North Carolina by respectable margins, in part due to high youth turnout and a fired up Democratic base that loathed the possibility of a second Trump term. He came within striking distance of Hogan in the states of Nevada, Arizona and Wisconsin; had he won the states, he would have secured re-election. 
Trump underperformed expectations. Although he maintained a slight grip over growing Republican strongholds Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Iowa, his upset defeats in Utah and Texas were perceived as emblematic of a Republican voterbase that longed to move on from Trump and his controversial election denialism as well as his mounting legal troubles in Georgia and New York. Nonetheless, Republican candidates performed respectably, maintaining their control of the House of Representatives (albeit by a narrow margin) and flipping the Senate, thereby reinstating Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader. 
==Contingent Election ==
As no presidential candidate had won an absolute electoral vote majority, the responsibility for electing a new president devolved upon the U.S. House of Representatives, which held a contingent election on December 9, 2024. As prescribed by the Twelfth Amendment, the House was limited to choosing from among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes: Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Larry Hogan; Libertarian nominee Spike Cohen and Green Party nominee Ajamu Baraka, neither of whom earned a single electoral vote, were therefore eliminated. Each state delegation, en bloc, had a single vote.
Ultimately, Representatives would largely vote according to the popular vote results of their states although controversially, Pennsylvanian legislators would defect in favour of Biden and Arizonian, Texan and Wisconsin legislators would defect in favour of Trump, cementing a Trump victory in the contingent election. The Senate, at the time controlled by the Democratic party, voted for Harris. Trump, who had been suspiciously silent following the announcement of a contingent election (after a series of well-publicised tirades after his underperformance was reflected on election night), held a victory speech in Miami later that night. Biden and Hogan would concede the election shortly thereafter, with the former deeming the outcome of the contingent election disappointing, although a necessary constitutional process. 
2024 Contingent United States Presidential Election
Candidate 	Votes	%
Donald Trump	26 	52
Joe Biden 	21 	42
Larry Hogan 	3 	8
==Aftermath==
===Unrest===
The outcome of the 2024 contingent election was highly controversial, with many considering it to be an affront on American democracy. Riots occured throughout the nation, protesting the Twelfth Amendment, the electoral college, the first-past-the-polls system and Republican gerrymandering that resulted in them achieving a majority of House seats in most states.
=== Kamala Harris' Resignation ===
Shortly after her inauguration as Vice President (after winning re-election during the contingent election), Harris resigned as Vice President against the advice of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, citing irreconcilable ideological differences with the Trump administration. Ted Cruz. Trump's running mate in the election, was voted in by the Senate 74-26 to replace Harris in April 2025.
=== 2025 General Strike===
Unrest over the outcome of the contingent election would culminate in a government shutdown in 2025, with several Democratic Congressmen launching a filibuster against President Trump's budget (which proposed a lowering of the debt ceiling and a downsizing of several government departments, including the Department of Commerce and the Department of Energy) and against many of Trump's cabinet and judicial appointments. The shutdown would last a record three months, causing the U.S. government to lose over a trillion dollars and plunging the nation into historic levels of debt. 
=== Twenty-Eight Amendment ===
In a compromise deal with Democrats in Congress to end the shutdown, President Trump and the Republican-dominated Congress passed the Twenty-Eight Amendment, which abolished the electoral college, replacing it with a ranked-choice popular vote system.
==== Effect on Democratic and Republican Dominance ====
Under the ranked-choice voting system, more Independent and third-party candidates would win elections, effectively ending the political duopoly carved out by the Democrats and Republicans over almost two centuries. Notable parties that would emerge in the decade following the passing of the Twenty-Eight Amendment included the Lincoln Party (a centrist party that advocated for states' rights and direct democracy, founded by Adam Kinzinger and Andrew Yang), the Progressive party (a democratic socialist party that was born out of fractures with the moderate wing of the Democratic party), the Patriot Party (a conservative party that branded itself on Trumpian right-wing populism), the Futurist Party (a single-issue party launched by Zoltan Istvan that focused on artificial intelligence and augmentation) and a reformed Libertarian party (spearheaded by Justin Amash). Consequently, the Democratic Party would moderate its positions on economic issues but remain socially liberal, while the Republican Party would turn to evangelism and later Christian democracy. 
Category:Elections
Category:American Politics
Category:Politics
Category:Folie à Deux
Category:Geopolitics 2020s
Category:Scenario: Folie à Deux