THE RACE TO be the Republican nominee in the 2024 US Presidential Election is heating up, with more candidates coming forward as frontrunner Donald Trump faces significant federal charges around the mishandling of classified documents.
In recent days, former US Vice President Mike Pence announced his campaign to run for the presidency, alongside former New Jersey Governor and prominent Trump critic Chris Christie.
They join frontrunner Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is seeking to overtake the former US President and claim the top spot on the Republican ticket.
This internal jostling is underway as Trump announced that he had been indicted on seven federal charges in the early hours of this morning, following a months-long investigation by a US special counsel.
While Trump has faced legal issues previously, including a civil sexual abuse case and charges in New York over alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, this is likely to be the most significant and disruptive case against him.
Some within Republican circles will likely be questioning whether or not it will be possible for him to continue to run as a candidate, with the potential for further charges to be brought in Georgia over electoral interference.
While it is still very early days in the race, with the presidential election not slated until November 2024, here are the names that are battling it out to be on that ticket.
The controversial former US President, who was defeated by Biden in the 2020 election, has spent the last two and a half years continuing to contest the results of that election and battling legal proceedings being levelled against him.
These have culminated in federal charges being brought against Trump. This is the first time in history that a former US President has been indicted on federal charges.
While the US Justice Department is yet to officially announce the indictment, it is based around whether or not Trump broke the law by keeping hundreds of confidential documents at his Florida home in Mar-a-Lago.
It also centres around whether or not Trump attempted to obstruct efforts to recover the documents.
Another recent case against him – a civil sexual abuse case – found Trump liable by a jury for sexual abuse against advice columnist E Jean Carroll in 1996.
Despite Carroll’s victory, Trump mocked her during a recent town hall with CNN, denying that he sexually abused her and labelled her a “wack job”.
He also used the town hall to defend the January 6 rioters, saying: “They were there with love in their heart”.
The former president is also facing potential charges in Georgia, with a prosecutor currently investigating whether or not Trump meddled in the 2020 election in the state.
The investigation is surrounding whether or not laws were broken as part of Trump’s bid to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia.
Despite this, Trump is currently leading among Republican voters in polling.
According to US election poll analyst website, FiveThirtyEight, Trump is leading the pack of Republican candidates at 53.8%. He’s over 30 percentage points over his closest rival, Ron DeSantis.
These polling averages were collated before the federal charges against Trump were revealed to the public, so the impact on his lead is yet to be seen.
A former Trump protégé, DeSantis began his campaign late last month with a catastrophic launch event on Twitter Spaces alongside tech billionaire Elon Musk.
The launch was riddled with technical difficulties, with around 20 minutes of crashes and lost connections – which Musk blamed on high levels of traffic.
The Florida Governor is seeking to court the ‘anti-woke’ vote within the Republican Party, with repeated references in his announcement to the “the woke mind virus”.
Over the last year, he has took aim at one of the major employers in his state, Disney, accusing the company of being woke.
The company had criticised legislation DeSantis brought in, referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” laws, which prevented education on sexual orientation and gender identity in pre-school to third grade, alongside barring education that is not “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate”.
As DeSantis hits the campaign trail, he has begun to criticise Trump publicly. He told reporters that Trump’s suggestion that New York’s pandemic response had been better than Florida’s was “detached from reality”.
During his first term as Florida’s Governor, DeSantis eased Covid-19 restrictions quickly following a lockdown which began on 1 April, with all restrictions ending on 25 September.
“That criticism is ridiculous, but it is an indication that the former president would double down on his lockdowns,” DeSantis said.
Currently, the Florida Governor is polling at an average of 21.3%, according to FiveThirtyEight.
One of the latest candidates to announce, former US Vice President Mike Pence has thrown his hat into the ring for the Republican nomination.
During his time in the White House, Pence was an unwaveringly loyal vice president to Trump but this relationship broke down in early 2021.
The split was acrimonious, with Pence refusing to follow Trump’s order to overturn the 2020 election, instead certifying Biden’s victory.
As the January 6 riots began at the US Capitol in Washington DC, crowds chanted to “hang Mike Pence” while a gallow’s was erected outside the legislature.
In the interim, Pence has testified to a grand jury investigating Trump and the attack on the US Capitol.
As an evangelical Christian, Pence backed the US Supreme Court for the overturning of Roe V Wade, removing abortion as a constitutional right.
At present, Pence is low in polls among Republican voters, sitting at an average of 5.4%, significantly behind both Trump and DeSantis.
Former US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley announced her campaign in early February, the first candidate to follow Trump into the race.
Alongside her two year stint at the UN, Haley served as South Carolina Governor between 2011 and 2017.
She has been critical of Trump since entering the contest, despite being his appointee to the UN, criticising his stance on Ukraine and January 6 in particular.
At a recent CNN town hall in Iowa, Haley told the audience that a Russian victory in Ukraine would start a wider global crisis.
“This is bigger than Ukraine. This is a war about freedom and it’s one we have to win,” Haley said.
While she took aim at Trump, she also hit out against Biden for his handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In an address in March at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), Haley called for Republicans to elect a “new generation” of leaders.
“If you’re tired of losing, put your trust in a new generation,” she told gathered delegates.
In current polling, Haley is behind Pence on an average of 4.5%.
The former New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, announced his candidacy two days ago and is positioning himself to be the candidate to take on Trump.
In his announcement, Christie denounced Trump and said that he would not “tiptoe” around the former president like other Republican candidates.
“There is one lane to the Republican Party’s nomination and he’s [Trump] in front of it,” Christie said.
“If you want to win, you better go right through him.”
Christie had been a key Trump aide after endorsing him in 2016, advising him up until 2020 when the two fell out over the then-president’s failure to accept defeat against Biden.
If Trump takes part in upcoming Republican debates, it is likely that he will face relentless criticism from Christie, who attacked him as “Putin’s puppet” for his stance on Ukraine.
Current average polls do not have Christie listed due to insufficient polling data.
The junior Senator for South Carolina, Tim Scott, launched his campaign in late May, saying that he wanted to see a return to “American values” while criticising Joe Biden and the “radical left”.
Scott, who rose from poverty to the Senate, is a significant and influential Republican voice within the US Capitol.
“Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every single rung of the ladder that helped me climb and that’s why I’m announcing today that I’m running for president of the United States,” he said in his announcement.
“You see, they’re attacking our American values, our schools, our economy, and our security. But not on my watch. Not on my watch. That won’t work. I can’t stand by while this is done to America.”
Scott is currently polling at an average of 2.2%, behind both Pence and Haley.
Alongside the above candidates, there are a raft of other Republican candidates seeking the nod for the nomination, but they are trailing behind.
This includes Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and conservative TV host Larry Elder.
Without significant change to the electoral roadmap, these candidates are unlikely to gain enough momentum to catch up to Trump, who is currently far and away the favourite.
The full list of candidates is:
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