After months of turbulence and uncertainty, Election Day is finally here. We still don’t know when the winner will be announced, just as we don’t know if the polls showing a dead heat are accurate. But we do have a good idea of the dynamics that will determine whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump is the 47th president of the United States. Here are the three key factors at play in the 2024 election.

Kamala Harris is in a situation that would usually spell defeat for the candidate of the party controlling the White House. Solid majorities of the voting public are very sour about conditions in the country. Legitimately or not, they think the economy is terrible; that the southern border is out of control; that violent crime and disorder are threatening our major cities. Joe Biden’s job-approval numbers (38.7 percent approve, 56.2 percent disapprove, per FiveThirtyEight), are significantly lower than the minimum associated with presidential reelections (or even presidential successions by a different candidate of the same party). Yes, Harris is a very different person than Biden in multiple ways, the most important being her age and debating skills. She has worked very hard to cast herself as a “change” candidate. But in the end she’s the sitting vice president of the United States, whose own job-approval rating is underwater even though it’s superior to Biden’s. Internationally as well as historically, all the signs indicate this isn’t a good position for Harris.

While the 46th president and their shared administration represent Harris’s most important “baggage,” there are also doubts and concerns among swing voters about her positions on the issues — which the Trump campaign has devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to depicting as “extreme.” In particular, she’s coping with the unpopularity of the progressive positions on immigration, crime, and transgender rights that she adopted as a California politician running for president in 2020. These positions have been........

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