This US presidential election is poised to be a close contest with polls showing presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump polling within a percentage point of each other in the latest polls.

Americans vote for a president and vice president once every four years and the impact of these elections reverberates outside the national borders of the US as well, hence the interest in these elections across the globe.

This year’s election’s major contenders are the Democratic party’s Harris and her vice presidential running mate, Tim Walz, up against Republican Trump and his VP pick, JD Vance.

Other party candidates such as the Green party’s presidential candidate Jill Stein, the Libertarian Party’s Chase Oliver, and the anti-war academic, Cornel West. The actual race, however, will essentially be down to the Republican and Democrat nominees.

As of September 2024, 186.5 million Americans are registered to vote for the elections that take place on the 5th of November. But how exactly does the whole process work? Does the one person who gets the most votes simply win the election? Well, not really as we explain:

Enter the Electoral College

The Electoral College is not an actual college as the name suggests but a process that underpins the US elections. When a voter votes for their preferred presidential candidate, their vote actually goes towards a group of people called electors.

Overall there are 538 electors in the US which make up the Electoral College and to win, candidates need to get 270 of them to vote for them. Electors are picked by the political parties on the basis of their loyalty and they pledge to vote for the candidate that has won their respective states.

Although each elector represents one vote, the number of electors from each state vary in number based on the state’s population size. California, the state with the largest population has 54 electors while the six least-populous states and the District of Columbia have only three electoral votes, the minimum number allotted to a state.

This means that one electoral vote in Wyoming, the least-populous state, represents about 192,000 people, while one vote in Texas which has 40 electors in total, one of the most underrepresented states, represents about 730,000 people.

There is also a slight variance in how the electors are deemed winners amongst the different states as well. Two states, Nebraska and Maine, have a proportional distribution of the electors.

In Nebraska and Maine, the winning candidate for the state receives two electors and the winner of each congressional district receives one elector. The winner for both may be the same as the overall winner or a different candidate. This system allows Nebraska and Maine to award electors to more than one candidate.

However, for all the other states the presidential candidate that wins the popular vote gets their selected electors appointed as the state’s electors. This is why campaigns usually focus on states where a small deviation can lead to winning the state and hence getting all its electoral votes added to their tally.

Some states matter more than others

Along with the total number of electors varying for each state, some states matter more to the presidential candidates under past polling patterns. That is to say, since some states almost always tend to vote either Democrat or Republican, the campaigns focus their energies on winning these ‘swing’ states, the states that tend to swing between both parties.

Winning these states can have a profound impact on winning the overall election as well. For this election, these battleground states are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, combining for a total of 90 of the 538 electoral votes.

According to AdImpact, $1 billion out of a total of $1.3bn spent between July 22 and Oct 8, has been in swing states. These voters have been overwhelmed with robocalls, texts, campaign visits, billboards, flyers, and social media messages as the campaigns try to sway a small percentage of the electorate that could swing the election in their favour.

Both the presidential candidates and their VP picks have visited these states for a total of 201 times during the election campaign, according to a tracker by WAPT. This further underscores the importance of these states to the US election as a whole.

The “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have hosted the most campaign visits by the Democratic nominees. At the same time, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina have been the most visted by the Republicans.

What else is at stake?

Apart from the presidential elections which end up getting the most attention, this election is important for other reasons as well.

Voters will also be voting for new members of Congress — where laws are passed —when they fill in their ballots.

Congress consists of the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are up for election,is the lower house of US parliament, the equivalent to Pakistan’s National Assembly.

Thirty-four seats in the upper house, the US Senate are also being contested in this election.

Republicans currently control the House of Representatives, which initiates spending plans. Democrats are in charge of the Senate, which votes on key appointments in government.

These two chambers pass laws and can act as a check on White House’s executive power if the party with the majority in either chamber disagrees with the president on any issue.

The end-game

The election process in the US essentially starts a whole year before the elections in November. Candidates announce their intention to run and the two major parties nominate their respective candidates after primary elections which are intraparty elections held for the nominee.

This year’s race is a bit different since the Democrat presumptive nominee was changed from current US President Joe Biden to current Vice President Kamala Harris after a disastrous debate performance and falling ill with Covid.

The Democrats’ party convention picked Kamala as a replacement and it was the first time in more than 50 years that a major party nominee was selected outside of the democratic process of primaries and caucuses.

But even after November, the world will have to wait three more months till the new President and Vice president are actually sworn in. Once the votes have been counted and the states have finalised their electors, the next step would be when the 538 electors will meet on December 17 to officially cast their votes and send the results to Congress.

In January, the new Congress is sworn in which then proceeds to count the electoral votes to formally announce a winner.

Those votes will be officially tallied by Congress on January 6, the date that became infamous after the last elections with supporters of the then United States president Donald Trump storming the US Capitol building in a bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election which was won by Democrat Joe Biden.

However, if neither candidate manages to secure a majority, the decision falls upon the House of Representatives while the Senate votes for the vice president.

Finally, on January 20, the new US president and vice president will be sworn in, concluding the 60th US Presidential election.