What you need to know about the US Presidential election
From the Electoral College to the next TV debates of the campaign, here's what you should know ahead of the Presidential election on 5 November.
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In brief...
- Voters will go to the polls on 5 November before members of the electoral college pick a candidate.
- There are at least six battleground states that could swing the election
- Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are set to debate live on TV next month. Their running mates, Tim Walz and JD Vance, will have a TV debate the following month.
When is the next US Presidential election?
The US Presidential election is on Tuesday 5 November. Around 240 million American voters will have the chance to vote for their next president.
Like in the UK, it is not the popular vote - the exact number of individual votes each candidate receives - that decides who wins.
Rather, the US system follows a process called the electoral college.
What is the Electoral college?
Every eligible citizen has the opportunity to vote.
But rather than voting for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump directly, votes will actually go towards so-called “electors”, who are the official members of the electoral college.
So votes are in essence informing the electors of which candidate to vote for at their electoral meeting.
Electors are typically appointed by the political party which wins the most individual votes. They are usually elected officials, party leaders, and people linked with their party's Presidential candidate.
Each of the 50 states and another for the US capital, Washington DC, can appoint a given number of electors in relation to their population size.
Once all the votes are in, the electors will meet on December 17 to officially decide which candidate to back. In the vast majority of cases, electors from each state will back the candidate that receives the most individual votes in their states.
There are 538 electoral college votes in total, and a candidate needs more than 270 to win the presidency.
This has been the way Americans have voted ever since the constitution was written up by the country’s founding fathers - who wanted an alternative to electing the president by popular vote or by Congress.
What is a swing state and where are they?
A swing state - also known as a battleground state - is one where voters do not traditionally vote for the same party election after election, or where results are especially tight.
It is in these states where presidential election wins are often decided. These included the so-called rust belt states of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.
They also include what Jon Sopel calls the "blue Democrat wall" states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Jon says these are “critical” in this election.
What's still to come?
TV debates
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have agreed to a live debate on ABC News on 10 September.
This is the only one that has been confirmed so far, but Trump has said he is also willing to debate Harris on NBC and Fox News.
Emily says that Harris can afford to be “fiery” and have a bit more “fun with it” when she debates Trump in December. Jon says that Harris’ “controlled, prosecutorial precision questions” could be “very, very uncomfortable” for Trump.
“It’s his to lose”, Emily adds on an American elections Q&A special for The News Agents.
The two running mates, Tim Walz and JD Vance, are also set to debate on 1 October on CBS.
When will we know the result?
It could take a number of days for the winner of the election to be declared after ballots are counted.
Speaking on a previous News Agents Q&A, Jon said: “If it’s a repeat of 2020, you’ll have to stay up something like 96 hours to see the result.
“The election happened on a Tuesday. Joe Biden got the 270 electoral college votes he needed. We got that result on Saturday morning.”
After the election there will be a transition period, with the new president sworn in during an inauguration ceremony in January 2025.