Donald Trump triumphs. The economy chugs along. A tech billionaire builds a shadow presidency. These are just some of the notable events that defined 2024. Meanwhile, the challenges of climate change persist while exciting new developments like artificial intelligence continue to amaze. I dove into the data and found 10 charts that I believe best illustrate this year’s biggest developments. They help us understand what happened — and provide a glimpse of where we may be going.
1. America Steps Right
Mr. Trump might have won the election’s popular vote by just 1.5 percentage points, but by many other measures, his victory was decisive and broad. He carried every state considered to be in play, including the Democrats’ traditional blue wall of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
At least as consequential is the fact that many Democrats stayed home: Turnout in their strongholds was weaker than four years earlier. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump made major inroads among Latinos, Black men and younger Americans — reflecting at least in part their disgruntlement over slow growth in real personal incomes, the immigration surge under President Biden and the belief that the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left on social issues.
2. An Expensive Campaign Season
Source: OpenSecrets
Note: Figures are adjusted for inflation.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss was not for lack of resources. Once again, the Democrats substantially outraised their Republican opponents, with Ms. Harris besting Mr. Trump among both small donors and large contributors.
Only among PACs that back single candidates did Mr. Trump do better, in part because some technology executives defected from the Democrats over regulatory issues such as cryptocurrency and antitrust.
While a staggering $5 billion was spent on the presidential election, that is actually slightly less (adjusting for inflation) than four years earlier, as that period included factors such as Michael Bloomberg’s expensive presidential bid and the two Senate runoffs in Georgia.
3. A Strong Economy (According to Data)
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Bureau of Economic Analysis; S&P Dow Jones Indices
Note: Indexed charts are indexed to the beginning of each presidency. G.D.P. is adjusted for inflation. Inflation is the year-over-year change in the personal consumption expenditure price index from the start of each presidency.
On traditional measures, the economy had a strong year. Inflation moderated, drifting down almost to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. Growth remained brisk, adding a commensurate number of jobs. And the stock market repeatedly hit record highs.
By many measures, after adjustments for the impact of Covid, the economy performed as well under Mr. Biden as under Mr. Trump. But the lingering sting of inflation was costly to the Democrats.
In December, the Federal Reserve shocked markets by lowering the number of projected interest rate cuts next year to two from four. That reflected a mix of good news (faster growth) and bad news (stubborn inflation).
4. Manufacturing Investment Surged
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Census Bureau
Note: Spending is adjusted for inflation.
One of the brightest spots in the economy has been the strong surge in corporate investments, particularly in manufacturing facilities. The latter was substantially stimulated by two major pieces of legislation passed during the Biden administration. The inaccurately titled Inflation Reduction Act offered tax credits and other assistance for climate-friendly energy projects while the CHIPS and Science Act allocated nearly $40 billion to stimulate production of semiconductors in the United States. Investment in other areas, particularly relating to technology and artificial intelligence, has also been increasing rapidly, a promising sign for future economic growth.
5. Elon Musk Had a Great Year
Perhaps the most extraordinary development of the Trump transition was the emergence of the technology billionaire Elon Musk as a kind of co-president-elect. In mid-December, Mr. Musk — who displays little knowledge of how Washington works — declared his opposition to a legislative package to prevent a government shutdown, exacerbating Washington’s penchant for chaos.
Meanwhile, he has benefited enormously from aligning with Mr. Trump, whose victory set off a near doubling in the Tesla stock price and contributed to a 67 percent increase in the value of SpaceX since June. That adds up to an extraordinary increase of more than $200 billion in Mr. Musk’s net worth, cementing his position as the richest person in the world. Pretty good return on his investment of $277 million in the Trump campaign and those of other Republicans. (He was the largest political donor this election season.)
6. Border Encounters Dropped
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Note: Encounters by country are unavailable before 2019.
A significant factor in the Democrats’ election loss was doubtless Americans’ fears of migrants storming our southern border. Yes, Mr. Biden made a consequential mistake early in his presidency by at least seeming to encourage migrants to try to enter the United States, resulting in a surge of encounters to more than 300,000 a month by late 2023, compared with 74,000 at the end of the Trump presidency.
But what Americans don’t seem to recognize — or give Mr. Biden credit for — was that by the fall of 2024, the total had dropped almost all the way back to where it was four years earlier.
7. A Global Desire for Change
Sources: CNN; BBC; Politico; NPR; Al Jazeera; Center for Strategic and International Studies
Note: G20 countries with elections in 2024. South Korea uses the share of legislature seats, not vote share.
The anti-incumbency mien in America was matched in 2024 by a similar — or even greater — desire for change in other countries. Of the nine G20 democracies that held national elections this year, the party in power lost vote share in seven of them.
In fact, the shift in the United States was among the smallest in percentage terms; in Britain, for example, voters gave the Labour Party a landslide victory in the House of Commons and the incumbent Conservative Party’s share of the vote dropped by 20 percentage points.
8. Global Temperatures Remain High
Source: National Centers for Environmental Information
While the fact that the climate is warming is hardly news anymore, the magnitude of the jump from prior years was noteworthy. Average temperatures were 0.1 degree Celsius above the prior year, which had been the hottest year on record, and 1.3 degrees above the 20th-century average. Weather patterns continued to prove erratic, from hurricanes in western North Carolina to wildfires in the Northeast.
9. The A.I. Boom Continues
Meanwhile, the artificial intelligence rocket ship continued to accelerate. A.I. has attained the fastest rate of adoption of any new technology in memory. The early success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which performed many tasks from drafting computer code to composing sonnets, helped spawn a raft of competitors and an even larger array of applications. The shares of companies at the center of the A.I. boom, such as the chip designer Nvidia, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon, soared. Artificial intelligence may not prove to be the financial bonanza that the market is anticipating, but it seems certain to change our lives — largely, I believe, for the better.
10. Death From Armed Conflict Slows
Source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program
While armed conflict again was front of mind for many Americans, at least global death tolls retreated modestly for the second successive year. Although the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza dominated news coverage, violence also continued in other places around the globe, including Sudan and Mexico.
In December, Syria’s regime under Bashar al-Assad unexpectedly collapsed, a welcome end to a murderous reign. Whether conflict and deaths in Syria will also end remains, however, uncertain.