Four months. Two assassination attempts. One candidate switch. A wild election cycle.

Only 131 days have passed since President Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate set off a chain of events that forced him from the race and reshaped the battle for the White House. The intervening four months has been one of the more frantic campaign stretches in recent memory – marked by everything from assassination attempts to hurricanes.

Whichever candidate wins will make history, for better and worse.

Vice President Kamala Harris would become the first woman, first person of Indian descent, and just the second Black president. She would also be the first major-party presidential nominee in more than a half-century to get there without first having to run the gauntlet of a primary campaign.

Former President Donald Trump would become just the second president in U.S. history to return to office after losing – and the first since Grover Cleveland in 1892. He also would be the first convicted felon to assume the presidency.

In the era of modern polling, a presidential race has never appeared this close. Polling averages have regularly missed the actual result in recent presidential cycles. This year, there’s a real chance that polls could be understating the support for either candidate.

A disaster of a debate. A party in panic. A nearly successful assassination attempt of a former president on the eve of his party convention. A candidate switcheroo. Another assassination attempt. A hurricane that devastated swaths of two key swing states. The successful hacking of one campaign and an aggressive disinformation campaign against the other – linked by investigators to Iranians and Russians, respectively. A deluge of dire warnings from both candidates about grave damage to the country if the other side wins.

If this election was the third installment of a movie series, critics would say it had jumped the shark.

Only 131 days have passed since President Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate set off a chain of events that forced him from the race and reshaped the battle for the White House. The intervening four months – especially the 107 days since he dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement on the ticket – has been one of the more frantic campaign stretches in recent memory.

Whichever candidate wins will make history, for better and worse.

Ms. Harris would become the first woman, first person of Indian descent and just the second Black president. She would also be the first major-party presidential nominee in more than a half-century to get there without first having to run the gauntlet of a primary campaign. Democrats fell in line fast behind Ms. Harris’ campaign following Mr. Biden’s late departure and immediate endorsement. The last candidate to be nominated by a major party without winning over its voters in primary elections was Democrat Hubert Humphrey, who went on to lose the presidency to Richard Nixon in 1968.

Former President Donald Trump would become just the second president in U.S. history to return to office after losing – and the first since Grover Cleveland in 1892. He’d also become the oldest president to enter office – he turned 78 in June and would be a few months older than President Biden was when he was inaugurated in 2021.