You’re here because you’re uncertain how to vote. You’re likely asking: Which candidate is going to deliver more for me, my family, my community, and the country over the next four years? Here is our summary analysis of the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses on the top issues, followed by our collective “bottom line” to help you make your choice.
How Our Scorecard Adds Up:
- Harris Will Deliver More: 11 Issues
- Trump Will Deliver More: 0 Issues
- Toss-Up Depending on Your Point of View: 4 Issues
On inflation and the economy:
Prices feel high. But inflation rates made necessary by pandemic-era spending – which enabled the U.S. to emerge from COVID faster and better than every other industrialized nation – have cooled and are now back to pre-pandemic levels (2.4%, currently).
- Donald Trump has based much of his campaign on channeling, and fueling, Americans’ dissatisfaction with prices and the economy, but his proposals for broad, deep tariffs on goods from other countries are certain to raise prices further. The pre-pandemic “miracle economy” he wants voters to remember was in fact a mirage, bought through unsustainable tax cuts that blew up our federal deficit, funneled almost all of its benefits to the wealthy, and substantially widened the gap in income and wealth between the top 5% and everyone else..
- Kamala Harris proposes more investments across the economy – in manufacturing, childcare, and housing in particular. She and President Biden have generated more new jobs during their four years in office – by far – than any other Administration in U.S. history. She promises to roll back Trump’s tax cuts for business and wealthy Americans when they expire in 2025, and replace them with tax credits for Americans whose housing costs represent more than 30% of their income. She would ban corporate price-gouging on groceries. All of these policies would benefit most American voters at a time when they are asking for help.
Advantage: Harris
On Immigration:
Americans nationwide are worried about illegal immigration – both the flow of migrants, and their impact once here. The facts are that neither issue is the nightmare so frequently called out by Trump and Vance. Migration from Mexico is back to pre-pandemic levels, and immigrants over many decades have committed crimes at rates significantly lower than other Americans. Nonetheless, the issue is a sticky one that cries out for a long-term legislative solution – something that Congress has so far been unable to accomplish.
- Kamala Harris focused much of her time as Vice President on working with three Latin American countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) to address the conditions stoking so much migration to begin with. Since then, migration from those countries has fallen dramatically. Harris would expand this approach, while championing bipartisan legislation proposed earlier this year – negotiated by some of the most conservative Republican Senators – to expand border security.
- Donald Trump regularly casts immigrants as an American enemy (“poisoning our blood” are his exact words), overlooking their many current and historical contributions to our economy, history and culture. His own ancestors, in fact, were immigrants from Germany. As President, he enacted sweeping anti-immigrant policies that included separating parents from their children at the border and cutting off any immigration whatsoever from countries he selected. As a former President, he personally prevented Congress from enacting legislation favored by his party leaders in an effort to keep the issue “hot” in the run-up to the election. If elected again, he promises to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, including those who have lived, paid taxes, and raised children here, in the largest deportation in U.S. history. Trump’s attitude towards immigrants has helped create blistering, hateful rhetoric among his followers, as was clear in his “closing argument” for his campaign at Madison Square Garden on October 27. These are extreme attitudes and policies that reject decades of American policy and tradition, but they have appeal to many Americans – as they have at various times in U.S. history.
TOSS-UP, depending on your point of view
On Democracy:
Both candidates and their supporters say that their opponent and his or her political party represent a fundamental threat to democracy. However, only one of these candidates – Donald Trump – demonstrably tried to subvert the peaceful transfer of Presidential power. And only one – Donald Trump – has made it a requirement for candidates and leaders in his political party that they join him in lying about the outcome of the last election. Neither of these actions has ever happened in the nearly 250 years of America’s history as a nation.
- Donald Trump and the Republican Party have maintained for years that our elections are threatened by widespread fraud. There is absolutely no evidence of such widespread fraud; this is a fiction designed to cast doubt on American election integrity. In 2022, Trump proposed the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution as a way of overturning the 2020 election. He promises to sweep out thousands of experienced federal agency staffers in favor of Trump loyalists, politicizing every aspect of the nation’s government. Neither Trump nor his running mate, JD Vance, have said they would respect the outcome of the upcoming election if they fail to win. Neither democracies or republics can survive if candidates for the highest office in the land cannot admit to losing.
- Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party have for years worked to pass legislation designed to ensure safe, fair elections and help every American citizen who wants to vote to do exactly that. As a federal prosecutor and attorney general for the nation’s largest state, she worked for decades to uphold the integrity of our legal system. Harris has committed to certifying the results of the upcoming election, as Vice President on January 6, 2025, in clear contrast with J.D. Vance, who refuses to make the same commitment if he’s elected, about his corresponding Constitutional responsibility in January 2029, following the next presidential election.
Advantage: Harris
On Gaza and Ukraine:
Two wars resulting from hostile attacks reveal differences in how both candidates for President see America’s role in the world.
- Kamala Harris vows to continue strong support for NATO and Ukraine, seeing Russian president Putin’s unprovoked invasion there a crucial test of European and American resolve. It is clear that success in Ukraine would lead to further Russian takeover attacks on other countries, blowing up the era of European peace that has endured since 1945. Harris likewise vows continued support for Israel, while also pushing for a long-term, two-state solution that would provide safe harbor for the Palestinian people and end the hostilities that have marked the Middle East since 1967. See Senator Bernie Sanders’ take on why voters thinking of sitting out this election because of this issue can do more good for both the Palestinians and Israel by helping to elect Harris, than by letting their principled absence help elect Trump.
- Donald Trump has expressed admiration for Putin and has encouraged Russia to invade any NATO country he feels doesn’t fund its own defense sufficiently. He would consider ending all aid to Ukraine. He claims without basis that neither the Russian nor the Hamas invasion would have taken place if he were in the White House. As President, Trump regularly belittled long-standing American allies such as Canada and France and made his fondness clear for autocrats in Saudi Arabia, Hungary, and North Korea. A second term by Trump in the White House, staffed not by respected foreign policy leaders but (as he overtly promises) by people who will readily agree with him, would clearly lead to a vastly more dangerous world, not a less dangerous one.
Advantage: Harris
On Reproductive Rights:
There is confusion among some voters on this issue, but the candidates’ positions are starkly different from each other. Donald Trump specifically nominated the Supreme Court justices who ended Roe v Wade and its protections for legal abortions before fetus-viability. Kamala Harris vows to restore those protections through legislative action. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to broaden the restrictions on women’s reproductive healthcare that 21 states have put in place since the Supreme Court ended Roe v Wade – not just access to abortion but all other aspects of that form of care as well, including, potentially, access to birth control. A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote to protect a woman’s right to make health decisions, with her doctors and partner, about her own body. The choice on this issue could not be clearer.
TOSS-UP, depending on your point of view
On Climate Change:
Kamala Harris respects the now-established science on climate change and would continue the Biden-Harris Administration’s strongest-ever track record in addressing it. Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax and promises to continue and deepen his first-term’s approach, which was to eliminate climate change as a policy priority and roll back environmental safeguards in favor of business interests.
Advantage: Harris
On Gun Laws:
Donald Trump and the Republican Party stand opposed to any form of gun legislation and even to research on the effects of gun violence in America. Kamala Harris is a gun-owner and protector of the 2nd Amendment who nevertheless advocates for gun safety laws that huge majorities of Americans – including most gun-owners – say they want.
Advantage: Harris
On Access to Healthcare:
Kamala Harris promises to widen access to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Medicaid, and Medicare and to broaden the regulation of drug prices (like $35 insulin) beyond Medicaid participants to all Americans. Donald Trump and the Republican Party would continue to work towards the elimination of the ACA with its health-insurance protections for Americans’ pre-existing conditions, with no alternative plan in sight.
Advantage: Harris
On Reducing the Income & Wealth Gap:
Policies of the Republican Party, including Donald Trump, have demonstrably exploded the gap between this nation’s richest 5% and literally everyone else, ever since Ronald Reagan took office in the 1980s. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts added exponentially to this gap. If elected, he promises to preserve the cuts and make them permanent if possible. The Democrats, particularly Bill Clinton, are not entirely blameless in some of their policymaking but in general, have worked and continue to work towards narrowing the income and wealth gap. Virtually all of Kamala Harris’s economic proposals attack these gaps head on and would measurably reduce them, improving the well-being of most Americans, if she were to be elected to office.
Advantage: Harris
On Public Education & Book-Banning:
Donald Trump supports efforts to enable parents to use public funds through vouchers to send their children to private and religious schools, and would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, which funnels all federal dollars to schools and works to ensure school quality. Kamala Harris would increase funding for public education and support for public school teachers, and opposes voucher programs. While Trump has supported efforts to ban certain books from school and public libraries, Harris opposes them.
TOSS-UP, depending on your point of view
On Freedom to Marry/LGBTQ Rights:
Donald Trump and JD Vance both have sought and implemented laws and regulations during their terms in office that restrict LGBTQ rights. Trump has supported the rights of Christian fundamentalists to discriminate against same-sex couples by refusing to serve them through their businesses – the same set of principles that were at stake in the 1960s when many businesses in the South refused to serve Black people. Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz have long records of protecting LGBTQ rights throughout their public service careers. The Biden-Harris administration has been called the most pro-LGBTQ administration in U.S. history.
Advantage: Harris
On Civil Rights and Race Relations:
Kamala Harris’s record as Vice President, with President Biden, includes fostering an economic recovery that has produced record-low levels of Black unemployment, sparked the most Black-owned businesses in three decades, and cut in half the number of children of color living in poverty. Their administration generated 5.5 million new jobs for Latino workers, achieving record-low unemployment levels among Latinos. She promises to build on these accomplishments, arguing that economic well-being is a central element in civil rights and improved race relations. A vote for Donald Trump would usher in Project 2025, his advisors’ plan for major reworking of the federal government, which would include the elimination of most federal programs designed to protect civil rights and enhance positive race relations.
Advantage: Harris
On Crime:
Like voter fraud or immigrant crime, the scaremongering of many Republicans, including Donald Trump and JD Vance, about crime “turning our cities into hellzones” is a lie designed to stoke their voter base. Overall, violent and property crime in the U.S. are both substantially down – by 50 to 71%, depending on the category – since their peak in the 1990s. Compared to that big decline, crime rates have held fairly steady in recent years, through both the Trump and Biden administrations with a minor rise during COVID. Both Trump and Harris support continued investment in policing. While Republicans are fond of accusing Democrats of wanting to “defund the police,” that is also an exaggeration if not a lie. Kamala Harris advocates for increased investment in border security and community policing. Trump would be the first convicted felon to serve in the White House, if he is elected.
TOSS-UP
On Social Security and Medicare:
While Kamala Harris supports expanding these programs, Donald Trump has entertained reforms that would curtail their growth, particularly under conservative planning for a second Trump term like Project 2025. Harris is a staunch defender of both Social Security and Medicare, viewing these as essential safety nets for retirees, seniors, and low-income Americans, emphasizing their role in ensuring their financial and health security and that of the entire country. The Republican Party has signaled its intention to restructure and significantly reduce federal spending, which would likely diminish Social Security and Medicare by shifting more responsibility to states.
Advantage: Harris
Character, Fitness, & Integrity:
Donald Trump scores abysmally low on all three of these important traits for the leader of the free world. He is a convicted felon and a relentless liar; he is documented as publicly stating 21 falsehoods every day during his four years in office, more than 30,000 times in all. He is showing signs of age-related mental decline at 78. But what makes him truly unfit to return to the White House is his unwillingness to acknowledge that he might lose – and that in fact he lost the 2020 Presidential election. That should disqualify him for this office, but he has managed to persuade – or bully – virtually the entire Republican Party into the same false belief. Kamala Harris, by contrast, has none of these issues and has led her life and a career in public service without blemish.
Advantage: Harris
The Bottom Line
Donald Trump relentlessly beats on a single drum: You are a victim and you are terribly at risk. “You’re not going to have a country any more,” he warns, before going on an extended rant about inflation, immigrants, runaway criminals, transgender people, or out-of-control left-wing liberals who hate America, he says, and want to drag it into the trash heap
None of this has any basis in real-world fact. It is Trump’s political strategy to rile up his base. There are valid reasons to vote for Trump in 2024 if you hold certain opinions on certain issues: if you are avowedly opposed to abortion, or believe that any gun law is a slippery slope towards elimination of the 2nd Amendment (that protects Americans’ right to own a firearm), or if you believe that immigration in all of its forms represents a grave threat to our economy and safety, or that climate change is a hoax.
But there’s another reason – likely the main reason that an undecided voter like you could be tempted to vote for Trump this fall: I’m angry! I’m frustrated by the state of the world right now! And voting for Trump feels like a way to say so.
But as the analysis on this Bottom Line page shows: that vote might feel good for a moment. But it is almost sure to feel like a mistake six months from now, or in four years, or in forty.
Read the summary above again, and the issue pages for more detail if you like.
On guiding the economy, protecting American interests in the world, preserving democracy at home, expanding access to healthcare, combating climate change, and defending Social Security and Medicare…. electing Kamala Harris will produce FAR better results than re-electing Donald Trump.
Many voters might also add: protecting a woman’s right to make her own healthcare choices, passing sensible gun laws, lowering crime rates even further (she was a prosecutor, after all), and solving immigration challenges humanely. Those, too, belong in the Harris column.
These are not the conclusions of some deep-pocketed Democratic political action group. They simply reflect the thinking of the citizen volunteers behind HowShouldIVote – organized four years ago to help undecided voters find straight-up, factual information they could trust as they decided how to vote.
Kamala Harris is extraordinarily well prepared to serve the nation at this moment – through her days as a federal prosecutor and attorney general, and as Vice President. When Biden stepped down, she stepped in with exactly the kind of speed, agility, spirit, vision, integrity, and organizing ability that make her the right person for the White House in 2024.
On the other side: think back to those scary days during COVID, when then-President Trump’s wishful ignoring of the crisis and his fascination for crackpot cures (drinking bleach?) led to nearly 200,000 needless American deaths. We live in a dangerous world. Is that really the person we want making the decisions when the fate of millions of lives here and around the world are at stake? Does America really want to elect a man, and a movement, whose closing statement in the campaign was made at a rally in Madison Square Garden that echoed the racist, hateful tone of the famous American Nazi rally in 1939? Take a look for yourself. The remarks of every speaker at this rally were pre-approved by the campaign and ran on speaker teleprompters, making the post-rally apologies sound pretty hollow.
“Like you,” Bruce Springsteen says in the video linked below, “I only have one vote. And it’s one of the most precious possessions that I have.”
If you’ve read this far into this website, you are honoring Bruce Springsteen’s statement: you are honoring the prized possession that is your vote.
We encourage you to think beyond this moment of your single, priceless vote, and reflect on the years to come and the safe, healthy, thriving, respectful world we all want to leave to our children and our neighbors’ children.
Vote like that future depends on it – because it does.
A Final Word About Congress
You’ve read across this website about the various plans Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both have if they are elected. Congress is a crucial partner. A divided federal government, with the House of Representatives, Senate, and White House controlled by members of different political parties, has trouble getting anything done.
That can act as a safeguard against extreme policymaking by one side or the other. This fall, one side – Trump and the Republicans – promises a degree of extremist ultra-conservative change that would make the nation almost unrecognizable if they were to control the White House and both houses of Congress. The other side – Harris and the Democrats – likewise need to control all three if they are to fulfill their agenda for the country. Reading through this website will inform you about how that agenda would serve the interests of most American voters.
If you have found this website at all useful, consider voting to provide Kamala Harris and Tim Walz with the Congress they need in order to do the work they want to do on behalf of the American people. Thank you.
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