The Endgame Election? : European Views on the United States Elections of 2024

This book examines the 2024 U.S. presidential election and how Donald Trump’s return to power unfolded against the backdrop of democratic backsliding, institutional fragility, and shifting electoral coalitions.

The Endgame Election? European Views on the United States Elections of 2024 examines whether the 2024 U.S. presidential election marks a decisive turning point in American democracy by analyzing the contest and its broader political context from the perspective of European scholars. Bringing together European scholars of American politics, this volume examines how Donald Trump’s return to power unfolded against the backdrop of democratic backsliding, institutional fragility, and shifting electoral coalitions. It analyzes the internal transformations of the Democratic and Republican parties, the extraordinary replacement of Joe Biden by Kamala Harris, the role of media ecosystems and misinformation, the dynamics of voter suppression and the Electoral College, and the growing openness to executive aggrandizement within parts of the Republican Party. The book situates the 2024 election within broader debates about constitutional accountability, partisan polarization, and the erosion of democratic guardrails, asking whether the election narrowed the avenues of democratic self-correction that once defined the American system. The European vantage point offers analytical distance and comparative insight into patterns of democratic erosion familiar from other contexts. This volume will be essential reading for scholars, students, and researchers of American politics, comparative politics, and democratic governance, as well as for policymakers and informed readers seeking to understand the implications of the 2024 election for the future of U.S. democracy.