US election 2024: Republican presidential candidates

Donald Trump

Former US president

Trump, 77, is the frontrunner for the Republican party’s nomination for president, despite mounting legal woes, including looming criminal trials in Manhattan and Miami. He is also the subject of ongoing investigations in Fulton County, Georgia, and at the US Department of Justice, stemming from his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Nevertheless, Trump remains the odds-on favourite to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024, thanks to the enduring loyalty of the party’s grassroots voters.

Ron DeSantis

Governor of Florida

DeSantis, 44, has been seen as the Republican best positioned to challenge Trump for the party’s nomination in 2024. As well as being a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, he served in the US Navy before running for Congress in 2012.

DeSantis’s political influence rose sharply after last year’s US midterm elections, when he was re-elected as governor of Florida by a near 20-point margin. But his campaign for president has got off to rocky start, prompting other candidates to try their luck at a bid for the White House.

Mike Pence

Former US vice-president

Pence, 64, was a loyal second-in-command to Donald Trump during his four years in the White House. But Pence famously broke with his boss on January 6 2021, when he refused to bend to Trump’s demands that he block the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.

Pence’s break with Trump appears to have cost him considerable support among Republican grassroots voters. But the former governor of Indiana and congressman has nevertheless pressed ahead with his presidential bid, aiming his pitch at evangelical Christians and conservative voters.

Tim Scott

US senator from South Carolina

Scott, 57, is the only black Republican in the US Senate and the top Republican on the Senate banking committee. A formidable fundraiser, he is popular with the party’s donor class and noted for his efforts to advance bipartisan legislation on Capitol Hill.

Like Pence, Scott has centred his message on fiscal and social conservatism — his campaign slogan is “Faith in America”.

Nikki Haley

Former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s ambassador to the UN

Haley, 51, was governor of South Carolina for six years before serving as Trump’s ambassador to the UN. The daughter of Indian-American immigrants, she is the only female candidate in the increasingly crowded field of Republican hopefuls.

Like other former Trump administration officials, Haley has walked a political tightrope as she tries to distance herself from the former president without alienating his loyal base of supporters.

Chris Christie

Former governor of New Jersey

Christie, 60, has had a tumultuous relationship with Trump. After dropping out of the Republican primary race in 2016, he was among the first national Republicans to endorse Trump, who later tapped him to run his transition team. But after an apparent dispute with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Christie was fired.

Christie nevertheless remained a trusted adviser and helped Trump prepare for the presidential debates in 2016 and 2020. But, like Pence, he broke with the president over January 6 2021 and has now positioned himself as a tough-talking candidate who is willing to go after Trump in a way other candidates will not.

Vivek Ramaswamy

Entrepreneur

Ramaswamy, 37, is an entrepreneur and political novice who has nevertheless gained some traction in polling in early voting states. The self-described “first millennial to run for president as a Republican” made hundreds of millions of dollars as a biotech entrepreneur before becoming an author, fund manager and one of the most prominent voices arguing against ESG investing.

Asa Hutchinson

Former governor of Arkansas

Hutchinson, 72, was governor of Arkansas for two terms from 2015 to 2023. The former chair of the National Governors Association, he also held several roles in the George W Bush administration. Before that, he was a member of the US House of Representatives.

Francis Suarez

Mayor of Miami

Suarez, 45, has been mayor of Miami since 2017. A relative newcomer to the national political stage, he has staked out policy positions that are at odds with many of his Republican rivals. He opposed DeSantis’s flagship Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, commonly called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and has said on record that he did not vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020.

Doug Burgum

Governor of North Dakota

Burgum, 66, was a political novice when he first ran for governor of North Dakota in 2016. Eight years later, Burgum — who sold a software company he founded to Microsoft for more than $1bn in 2001 — has entered the presidential race with little national name recognition but the deep pockets required to run a major campaign.

Will Hurd

Former Texas congressman

A former CIA clandestine officer who later served three terms in the US House of Representatives, Hurd, 45, was for a time the only black Republican in the lower chamber of Congress. A prominent Trump critic, he entered the presidential race in late June, calling himself a “dark horse candidate”.

Larry Elder

Radio show host

Elder, a 71-year-old conservative talk radio host, first ran for elected office in 2021 as a Republican candidate in the recall election of Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California. Elder was the top performer in a long list of challengers, but Newsom won the recall, with nearly two-thirds of voters backing him staying in office.

Perry Johnson

Businessman

The Michigan business owner, 75, tried to run for governor of the midwestern state in 2022, but was disqualified after the state’s elections bureau determined he had filed thousands of fraudulent nominating signatures. Johnson’s longshot bid for president was launched in early 2023 and included purchasing a television ad to run in Iowa during the Super Bowl.