LONDON, England — America’s Election Day is here, and people all over the world are anxiously waiting to see whether U.S. voters choose Republican candidate Donald Trump or Democratic candidate Kamala Harris to be their next president. The impact of their choice will reverberate around the globe.
As a Washington Post reporter based outside of the United States, I am frequently asked this question: Why will some voters have more sway than others? Even though more than 158 million voters cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential race, the decisions of just over 45,000 voters living in three states effectively carried the race for Joe Biden.
I’ll answer that question and more in this guide on what to expect in the U.S. election, geared toward readers around the globe (or anyone who wants a super-simple explanation of what’s happening).
Why do voters in some states have outsize sway?
Adult U.S. citizens each get one vote to elect a president. But the race is not determined by winning the overall number of votes.
That’s because of the electoral college. States are allocated a certain number of “electors,” depending on their population size, who are expected to cast votes for the candidate that wins the popular vote in their state. For almost all states, if a candidate wins by even just a hair, they secure all the state’s electors. (There are just two exceptions, where the electors can be split.)
Now, here are the magic numbers that will be blasted over American cable news as votes are counted:
There are 538 electoral votes available across all states.
To win the presidency, the candidates need to win at least 270 of them – a majority.
Going into the race, Democrats and Republicans are counting on holding states that are reliably blue (liberal) or red (conservative) and secure their electoral votes. California, for instance, gets 54, as the most populous state in the union, and typically goes to Democrats. Texas, which has voted Republican for almost five decades, has 40. So the attention is on a handful of “swing states” – which tend to flip between Democrats and Republicans.
Even razor-thin margins in these states can make a huge difference to who wins. That’s partly why the electoral college, envisioned in the 18th century by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as a sort of compromise between the population directly electing the president and Congress appointing someone, is controversial in America.
In 2000 and 2016, then-Republican candidates George W. Bush and Donald Trump respectively won the electoral college but not the popular vote. A recent Pew poll found more than 6 in 10 Americans would prefer to see the winner of the presidential election be the person who won the most votes nationally.
No other democracy uses an electoral college system to elect the leader of its government. Canada, Britain and Australia use parliamentary systems in which the country is led by a prime minister – a lawmaker who can command a majority in the legislature. A handful of other countries, such as Germany and India, use systems comparable to the electoral college to elect their head of state, or president, but not to select the country’s actual executive, the prime minister.
The United States would need to amend its Constitution to reform or abolish the electoral college system. There have been hundreds of attempts to do that. All have failed.
Which are the swing states in 2024?
Just 18% of American voters live in swing states, also called battleground states, per a Washington Post analysis last year, as America grows increasingly polarized along both political and geographic lines.
In this election, voters in the seven states of Pennsylvania (which has 19 electoral votes), Georgia (16), North Carolina (16), Michigan (15), Arizona (11), Wisconsin (10) and Nevada (6) are the ones to watch. The Post’s pre-election day polling averages showed neither candidate leading by more than two points in any of them.
Different combinations of those states could help each candidate secure a path to victory – or what’s sometimes called “the road to 270.” Harris campaign officials see winning Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, plus one electoral vote in Nebraska, as their best chance if they can keep Democratic strongholds, The Post reported. Trump campaign officials see a path through North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Voters living in swing states receive a barrage of messages from campaigns on their phones, in their mail, from their friends, family and colleagues, over radio, television, streaming services and social media networks.
The Washington Post‘s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez is reporting from Arizona. In 2020, the once solidly Republican state voted for the Democratic candidate, Biden, for the first time in 20 years. This year, polling suggests the state’s contest — worth 11 electoral college votes — could be tight.
I asked: What makes Arizona such a swing-y state?
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez: Arizona’s deep red roots have turned more purple these days, largely driven by a rise in far-right candidates, transplants from other states and growth of the Latino electorate. Republicans still maintain a voter-registration advantage, but Democrats and independents have also made gains. The state has it all: proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border and all that comes with the border-security debate, a crisis of housing affordability and a large swath of moderate Republican voters who are turned off by uncivil politicking – from former president Donald Trump to U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake (R).
Q: How would you describe the atmosphere on the ground in Arizona, in the run-up to Election Day?
A: Everyone is holding their breath — and no one expects to know who the winner will be on Tuesday night, when results first post. On both sides of the aisle – and everywhere in between — Arizonans expect a squeaker of a race. Biden won Arizona in 2020 by 10,457 votes, a margin so close that a repeat performance would send the race to an automatic recount under a relatively new law.
When will we know who won the U.S. election?
The earliest polls close at 6 p.m. Eastern time, when the first unofficial results will start coming in, with the latest polls closing in Alaska seven hours later.
It will take hours — if not days — for the votes to be counted and the overall winner of the presidential race to be projected.
So it’s very possible that Americans staying up late will go to sleep without knowing their next leader – and that those following the news from Europe will wake up on Wednesday without any answers, either.
In 2020, it took four days for news organizations to call the presidency for Biden. This year’s results could be delayed by a number of factors. News outlets will take the decision to “call” a state and its electoral votes for Trump or Harris very seriously, using projections from precinct-level data available after polls close. If the race is close in battleground states, news organizations will want to see more data from across the state before making a call.
In 2020, an influx of mail-in and early ballots during the coronavirus pandemic is partly what slowed the counting. Enthusiasm for early voting has stayed high.
Also, two key swing states — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — don’t allow mail ballots to be processed before Election Day. Since those are critical states, anticipated high levels of mail-in voting in these states could delay results for the whole country.
There’s also a possibility that the results could be challenged, which could keep the world in suspense for even longer.
How important is the president of the United States?
The U.S. president, as America’s head of state and commander in chief of its military, is one of the most powerful individuals in the world. They have the power to enforce laws — and issue executive orders, directives to federal officials that have the power of a law. They appoint heads of agencies and leaders across the federal government, and nominate judges including to the Supreme Court who can serve for life. All of this can have a deep impact on Americans’ daily lives.
But the U.S. president — whose term expires after four years — does not have limitless power. The executive branch, along with the legislative and judicial branches, form three, equal parts of the government. Collectively, they are the “checks and balances,” as outlined in the country’s Constitution, that prevent too much power from being concentrated in any one branch.
Congress, for instance, is the sole branch of government with the power to draft legislation. Any president hoping to pass his or her own agenda must work with Congress, which in Washington is sometimes referred to as “Capitol Hill” or just “the Hill.”
The U.S. Senate, with 100 members, is currently narrowly controlled by Democrats. This cycle, 34 seats are up for grabs. Republicans need to pick up two seats to control the chamber. This leaves Democrats only a narrow path for maintaining their majority there. The other chamber, the House of Representatives, is controlled by Republicans. All 435 seats are up for election, but just 1 in 10 considered competitive. Both parties have a chance of winning overall control of the chamber.
When does the election winner become president?
Even after news organizations “call” a state for a presidential candidate – and ultimately, the entire race once one surpasses 270 electoral votes – there is a separate bureaucratic process that legally designates the next president.
It begins after polls close with an official vote count known as a canvass. This rigorous process of vetting and confirming the results of roughly 10,000 election precincts can take days or weeks to finalize – depending on the state. After certification, states have until Dec. 11 to certify their results.
On Dec. 17, state electors — typically state elected officials or party insiders — will meet to cast their electoral college votes, which must be received by the president of the Senate and the head of the National Archives no later than Christmas. On Jan. 6, the new Congress will meet and count the electoral votes, confirming them officially. The president and vice president will take office after being sworn in on Jan. 20, known as Inauguration Day.
How can I follow the race from abroad?
The Post will publish election results on a live dashboard on election night. As the votes flood in, our statistical model will analyze them and eventually forecast the outcome.