Dreams of the US President 2024

Kelly Bulkeley and Jennifer Marie Lane

The domain of meaning in dreaming extends beyond the personal sphere of individual daily concerns to include social experiences relating to collective concerns. Although still a controversial claim, there is mounting evidence in favor of this as a basic principle of dream phenomenology. A communal dimension of dream significance appears in classic religious texts, such as Pharaoh’s dreams of coming famine in the Bible’s book of Genesis and Muhammad’s pre-battle dreams in the Qu’ran. The theme of dreams as a collective source of insight and guidance can be found in anthropological studies of cultural groups from virtually every part of the world, from Siberia to the Amazon, from Iceland to Hawaii, from Egypt to the Great Lakes (Von Grunebaum and Callois, 1966; Tedlock 1988; Mittermaier 2003; Mageo and Sheriff 2022). Instances abound in contemporary Western societies, too, in the form of dreams relating to collective events like firestorms, wars, terrorist attacks, the pandemic, and, less disastrously, films, celebrities, sports, and holidays (Siegel 1993, Bulkeley and Kahan 2008). Carl Jung had a prophetic dream of World War I; Freud dreamed about a reactionary Austrian politician. Charlotte Beradt’s remarkable book The Third Reich of Dreams details the experience of dreaming in conditions of political oppression (Beradt 1966). Martin Luther King, Jr., was reassured by a midnight “kitchen vision” to continue his fight for social justice (Davis 2009). The point, which only seems strange from an individualistic Western perspective, is that whatever else we say about the nature of dreaming, we have good evidence showing it is deeply interwoven into the social fabric of our collective lives together.

In this context, one of the co-authors (KB) began a line of research in 1992 focused on dreams relating to US Presidential elections, pursuing the hypothesis that the attention and emotional energy aroused by the election campaigns would have a tangible impact on people’s dreaming, which would highlight the bigger point about the collective dimensions of dreaming (e.g., Bulkeley 2008). This research has continued and expanded since then, resulting most recently in the biggest project to date, 2020 Dreams (Gutman and Bulkeley 2023), an all-digital, multi-authored work of scholarship that analyzes more than two thousand dream reports gathered during the year 2020 by correlating patterns in the dreams with patterns in the daily news as reported by the Associated Press. Over the course of these three decades of research, several recurrent themes have emerged that will influence our approach and analysis in this article. First is that contemporary Americans do indeed dream about politics and politicians, especially about Presidents and presidential candidates. Sometimes these dreams are very positive, sometimes very negative, and sometimes they are surprisingly personal and even intimate. This article presents several reports of this kind.

Previous findings have prompted a more specific hypothesis that people’s dreams of a politician represent a measure of that politician’s charisma, as the term is used by the sociologist Max Weber (Gerth and Mills 1946). For Weber, charismatic political authority is opposed to the traditional practices of patriarchal authority and the rational systems of bureaucratic authority. In times of distress, “natural leaders” emerge whose power derives not from reason or tradition but from their special gifts of body and spirit and their charismatic capacity to elicit trust, enthusiasm, and devotion in their followers. To the extent this concept applies to the oneiric realm, we can measure a politician’s charisma by the frequency of their appearance in people’s dreams and the relational quality of their presence in those dreams. Earlier studies of the high frequencies and intimate/spiritual qualities of people’s dreams about Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 led to a predictive notion: The candidate about whom people dream the most is the one most likely to win the given election. As this article will show, dreams during the election of 2024 supports that predictive notion, albeit in a different ideological register from the earlier studies.

Sources and Methods

The present study draws upon a survey conducted on behalf of the Sleep and Dream Database by YouGov, a professional opinion research company. The sample size was 3,055 American adults (age 18 or older) (1,453 male, 1,602 female). Fieldwork was undertaken between 23rd – 26th September, 2024. The survey was conducted using an online interview administered to members of the YouGov panel of individuals who have agreed to take part in surveys. Emails were sent to panelists selected at random from the base sample. The e-mail invited them to take part in a survey and provided a generic survey link. Once a panel member clicked on the link they were sent to the survey that they were most required for, according to the sample definition and quotas. (The sample definition could be “US adult population” or a subset such as “US adult females”). Invitations to surveys don’t expire and respondents can be sent to any available survey. The responding sample is weighted to the profile of the sample definition to provide a representative reporting sample. The profile is normally derived from census data or, if not available from the census, from industry accepted data. YouGov make every effort to provide representative information. All results are based on a sample and are therefore subject to statistical errors normally associated with sample-based information.

This survey, conducted approximately six weeks before the US Presidential Election, asked participants two questions specifically related to the election: one, which Presidential candidate do you support, and two, have you experienced a dream relating to the election. If the participants answered yes to the dream question, they were asked to describe the dream in as much detail as they felt comfortable.

There are many limits to this kind of empirical research. Surveys offer no interaction with the dreamers, and thus no opportunity for follow-up questions and collaborative interpretation. We only have access to their self-reports and their other survey answers. Furthermore, people can be reluctant to share private details in an impersonal research context, and even when they try to be forthcoming, people sometimes edit or revise their dreams to appear more pleasing to the questioner. This can limit how far we generalize from the dream reports we do gather, encouraging us always to recognize these dreams are but a fraction of the totality of collective dreaming at a given moment in time.

Taking these limits into account, the great benefit for dream research of a demographic survey methodology is the opportunity to hear dreams from a wide variety of people in society as a whole. Experience has shown that many forms of dream research—e.g., psychotherapy sessions, college student experiments, laboratory studies, open calls for dreams—tend to over-sample some groups and under-sample other groups. Of relevance for this article, typical dream research methods often include higher proportions of women and/or political liberals and lower proportions of men and/or political conservatives. The reasons for that imbalance are complex and interesting, but beyond the scope of this paper to discuss. Suffice it to say that a primary justification for using a demographic survey methodology, despite its limitations, is that it helps us cast a wider and more systematic net to gather new information about how dreaming reflects our social and political lives. The results will be best understood as providing a complementary empirical resource for other methods of inquiry, all working together towards a greater appreciation of dreaming as a wellspring of collective insight and guidance.

Results

A total of 220 participants provided a response to the dream report question. After carefully reading and re-reading the reports, the co-authors sorted the reports from Trump and Harris supporters (setting aside the 11 reports from supporters of third-party candidates) into seven categories: General dreams about the election, Trump victory, Harris victory, Trump nightmare, Harris nightmare, Civil disorder, and Encounter with a Politician. Below are samples of reports from each category. An eighth category is included for the small number of invalid responses. The entire collection of dreams is available upon request for further study in the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb). All quotes below are the complete unedited responses from the participants. Only a final period has been added to the end of a report when needed. After each report, the participant’s identification number for this survey is included, along with a “T” if the person indicated they are a Trump supporter and an “H” for a self-identified Harris supporter.

General dreams about the election.

Reports in this category (a total of 30) include references to the experience of voting, campaigning, debates, polls, and generic presidential candidates. Several of these dreams associate the election with positive social interactions. Many more Harris supporters (26) than Trump supporters (4) reported dreams of this type.

“that i went to vote and saw the candidates.” (1217, H)

“I had a dream about elections. There were people going to vote and they were happy.” (1821, H)

“I went to the polls and met a lot of my old friends, and we had a great chat.” (116, H)

“Dreamed about standing in line waiting to vote and seeing random people I know.” (210, H)

Other reports in this category are less favorably disposed toward the process.

“I fell into a hole while going to the elections.” (1903, T)

“I dreamed that about the debate cause that’s all they talk about on social media.” (1935, H)

Trump victory.

Most of these dreams (32 in total) are reported in brief, straightforward fashion.

“Donald Trump wins the election.”
(1580, T)

“Trump won.” (2310, T)

“Trump won.. thank god.” (698, T)

“Kamala loses by a landslide.” (1605, T)

A few of the dreams in this category express social and emotional positivity.

“Trump D. Was triumphant and we were all jubilating with our family. And i woke up.” (2543, T)

“I was in a crowd in NYC like Times Square. Everyone was there for Trump. He had won but I woke up before he came. I’ve never been to Times Square.” (2602, T)

Harris victory.

The same number of dreams in this survey collection (32) anticipated a Harris victory, many in similarly brief, straightforward terms.

“Kamla Harris wins.” (96, H)

“I dreamt that Kamala won.” (1005, H)

“I dreamed that it was a landslide victory for kamala Harris.” (2042, H)

And several of these dreams also express social and emotional positivity.

“Kamala Harris becomes the first Black woman to win the election. People nationwide celebrate her victory.” (3085, H)

“I dreamed that we were in DC for the inauguration of Harris- we will be there if she wins- so maybe that’s why I dreamt about it.” (2455, H)

Trump nightmare.

These reports (23 in total) do not anticipate a Trump victory from a supporter’s perspective; on the contrary, they express a host of negative emotions in relation to his winning the election, all from Harris supporters.

“I’ve had nightmares where Trump wins. And I feel terrible and afraid.” (720, H)

“Anxiety dream about the horrific result if trump gets back into office. I woke up having a panic attack and had a migraine all day.” (921, H)

“Trump was elected and I woke up in a panicked sweat. It was a nightmare.” (982, H)

“Nightmares, really, not dreams. I experience a wave of fear related to Trump being elected, and then a variety of storylines wherein he has me arrested, imprisoned or deported for my issue advocacy or political activism.” (2447, H)

A subset of four dreams specifically mention Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale as an anticipated nightmare consequence of his victory.

“Trump won and a real life handmaid’s tale started.” (98, H)

“Trump winning and handsmaids tale begins.” (1003, H)

“I have agonized and stressed over this election. Usually my dreams relate to me losing my rights and living in a world similar to a combination of a handmaiden’s tale and ww2.” (1298, H)

“I had a nightmare where everything was a mash-up of 1950s stepford wives and Handmaid’s Tale Gilead under a Trump administration.” (2770, H)

Harris nightmare.

There were fewer Harris nightmares reported in this survey (13 in total) compared to Trump nightmares. The nightmares about Harris, all from Trump supporters, also express fear for personal and collective safety, although they do not offer as many emotional details or recurrent themes.

“It was more of a nightmare. The dream was waking up on November 6th and Kamala Harris was the winner of the election.” (2817, T)

“The fear of Harris taking over our wonderful country!” (540, T)

“Dream of Kamala winning election and the disaster befalling this country should that happen.” (756, T)

“Trump lost elections and Harris won and completely destroyed our democracy and caused total chaos!” (3035, T)

“I dreamed that Harris won and God was totally against it that he came back to save the world but woke up before anything was done.” (872, T)

“The democrats won, and I became an expat in Costa Rica.Sold everything I own here, and took myself and my dogs far FAR away.” (190, T)

Civil disorder.

The dreams in this category (29 in total) involve various kinds of public conflict and violence–riots, assassinations, civil war, disrupting the elections, or fighting over the results.

“Trump loses and the riots start then Harris is the winner and the riots start.” (274, H)

“There was a lot of blood shed people running away from soldiers.” (653, T)

“I saw in my dream where civil war broke out in America.” (1123, T)

“Chaos.” (1857, T)

“I saw Kamala Harris dressed in dark tan/brown pants suit. She was making a speech that I couldn’t make out. Then I saw Her leading Trump in the polls. Then I saw Trump giving a speech, saying. “STOP THE VOTE” and I saw people showing up to the polls armed. I had this dream about a week before Biden left the race.” (1007, H)

“I’ve had nightmares of another January 6th, since I was there working and was trapped alone for 8+ hours.” (2227, H)

Several of the reports in this survey refer to the assassination attempts against then-candidate Trump on July 13 and on September 15, the latter just eight days before the survey’s launch. If references to Trump dying before the election are included, eight of the dreams have this particular theme. Here are two instances.

“Crazy as it might sound, I once dreamt about the assassination on Trump as a facade to shoot up his odds and he influencially won the election.” (1159, H)

“Illegal immigrants storming in a debate in an attempt to assassinate Trump.” (3164, T)

Encounter with a Politician.

These dreams (44 in total) are less abstract than the others. The dreamer doesn’t just think about a politician, but has a personal encounter with them, which in the dream state can feel experientially real. The scenarios of this type of dream include talking with a politician, exchanging gifts, sharing a meal, being together at a party or at the dreamer’s home. Also included here are reports in which the dreamer dreams of becoming President themselves. Here are several instances of Trump encounters:

“I dreamed that I got to meet Donald Trump and he gave me a MAGA hat.”(196, T)

“Trump was a guest at an event I attended. We interacted somewhat.” (210, H)

“I dreamed we met President Trump.” (466, T)

“I have dreamed of Pres Trump in my parents’ home, and it was summertime and hot. Yet he was dressed in his suit and tie. And I wondered that he would be so hot all dressed up.” (1354, T)

“I have had dreams in which Donald Trump appears. I don’t remember other details.” (2294, H)

“I met Donald Trump, and was repelled and fascinated. He wasn’t as charismatic as I expected, just soft spoken, old and weak.” (2476, H)

“A friend of mine who passed away was walking arm and arm with trump. I said to her get him away from me. She chuckled and literally skipped off with him.” (2705, H)

“Memory has faded but several bad dreams involving Donald Trump.” (2073, H)

Here are several instances of Harris encounters:

“I dreamed Kamala Harris had something on her face, she was obscured by a shadow covering what she had done. Her hands were up like she was shrugging her shoulders. The dream was in color. Her suit was dark, her shirt was cream colored, her hair was messy because something caused it to be messy. There were drops of rain obscuring my vision, but I could see it was her.” (589, T)

“dreaming that I was next to Harris, who had just been appointed president, and we were having coffee at Starbucks.” (1115, H)

“I don’t remember much, but it involved Kamala Harris. She was at some kind of small event that I attended. There were maybe 50 people there and she addressed the group.” (1642, H)

“I dreamed about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. It was a pleasant dream, and they were at some kind of event I was at, just walking around and talking to people there.” (1693, H)

“Kamala Harris was arguing with some guy while I was fishing on a dock and then Tim Walz drunkenly stumbled up behind her to admonish this guy and got so flustered that he fell into the water.” (2337, H)

The following three reports describe dream experiences of especially intense political content.

“I was driving down as rural road and the further I got the deeper the woods got and the bigger the Trump signs (for president) got and they were just engulfing me The roads were narrowing and then what I’d call floodgates opened up then what I’d basically describe as Nazi zombies were coming out of all these trailer like structures. It woke me up. It wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare and it just freaked me out. Earlier in the week I had actually gone on a drive through a couple rural Maine towns with a bunch of trump/vance signs It did makee feel a bit uncomfortable at the time. Apparently my subconscious took it a lot harder!” (115, H)

“I had a dream related to the 2024 US election just last week. In my dream, I was attending a rally for Donald Trump, and I was impressed by his passionate speech. However, the scene suddenly shifted to a debate between Trump and Kamala Harris, where they were discussing economic policies. It was vivid and felt so real.” (1492, T)

“I had a dream that is based in reality that I got back in touch with a friend who is now a Trump supporter. In the dream this friend now hates me. This does happen often to dreams that are semi based in reality, or that have a likelihood of what could happen. As well in my dreams that are based in reality I somehow die at the end of every dream.” (1014, H)

Looking at the whole set of 220 dream responses, Donald Trump is mentioned or appears in 97 of them. Kamala Harris appears in 61. Joe Biden and Tim Walz appear in 4 reports each, J.D. Vance in 3, and the following figures appear once each: Hillary Clinton, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Elon Musk, Tom Hanks, Drake, Nicolas Maduro, Charlie Kirk, and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Discussion

Keeping the previously stated limits in mind, the results of this survey sheds new light on several important points in the study of the interactions between dreaming, politics, and culture. First and most fundamentally, these results provide further evidence that at least some people do dream about politics and electoral campaigns. This supports the idea that dream content, in addition to purely personal concerns, also includes references to issues and events of collective concern. Second, the results illustrate the various ways in which political themes enter the contents of dreaming. Both major party candidates appear in the dreams here, reported by supporters of both candidates, in both very positive and very negative emotional terms. Rather than some kind of narrow partisan phenomenon, politically-themed dreaming seems to be distributed broadly across the ideological spectrum.

A third finding to highlight here concerns the relative numbers of dream references to the two major party candidates. Reading through the entire collection of 220 responses, we find 97 references to Trump and 61 references to Harris. This is a large difference, and as noted in the Introduction, previous studies have suggested that being the candidate more people dream about correlates with being the candidate more people vote for. This was most vividly true with Bill Clinton, about whom many more people dreamed than about his opponents George W. Bush and Ross Perot in 1992 (although Perot had a brief spike of dream appearances) and Bob Dole in 1996, and with Barack Obama, who had much higher frequencies of people dreaming about him than his opponents John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 (although during the 2008 Democratic primaries, the frequencies of dreams about Hillary Clinton rivaled those of dreams about Obama). These dream patterns may be coincidental with electoral results, of course, but they are also consistent with the notion that what connects a politician’s dream appearances and electoral success is the quality of charisma. In Max Weber’s account, charisma is a disruptive form of political authority that ignores bureaucratic rationality and traditional practices in favor of leadership by specially blessed, divinely-sanctioned figures whose power draws upon the intense devotion of their followers. These attributes of charismatic leadership—the strong emotionality, spiritual enthusiasm, transformative hope, and relational bonding—make it fertile territory for dreaming, much more so than conventional types of political authority. This is not necessarily good or bad; as Weber himself says, “the concept of ‘charisma’ is here used in a completely ‘value-neutral’ sense” (Gerth and Mills 1946, 245). In this light, what is striking about the present survey is that it demonstrates an ideological flexibility in the interactions of dreaming and charismatic leadership. Previously, these dynamics of dreaming, charisma, and electoral success were most easily observed among the supporters of left-of-center Democrats like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, with less evidence of such dream phenomena among the supporters of right-of-center Republican politicians. However, the results of the 2024 election, both electorally and oneirically, indicate that a similar, charismatically inflected pattern of disparate dream references between two candidates can work to the favor of the right as well as the left.

Conclusion.

The results of this study leave many important questions unanswered about the meaning and long-term significance of the 2024 American Presidential election. But the findings here may have value in raising new questions that only come into view once we recognize the significance of these political themes in people’s dreaming. For instance, how long does political charisma last? Do ongoing patterns of dream content reflect both the waxing and the waning of people’s charismatic attachment to a certain politician? To what extent may we envision a political leader, movement, or party intentionally trying to stimulate people’s dreaming engagement and responsiveness? If politicians are already doing this at some unconscious level, what more could they do if they made a more conscious, focused effort to inspire their followers’ dreams? Could this become a harmful process if the goal became nothing more than trying to arouse nightmares about one’s opponents?

Another set of questions raised by this study concerns the possibility of the systematic analysis of dream content enabling us to track the early development of charismatic leadership and its emergence in the public sphere. We might want to try identifying individuals about whom other people are dreaming at an unusually high frequency and consider the possibility that such dreams indicate a potential for charismatic leadership in those individuals. This will be a challenge for dream researchers, who will need to move beyond the general demographics of the present study to explore in more detail the social psychology of smaller groups where particular figures may be the subject of intense and frequent dreaming among other group members. But if the insights can be extended to this level of analysis, we may find that in people’s dreams of today we can witness the emergence of the future leaders of tomorrow.

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