It has been a super-tight race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and more twists and turns are guaranteed after polls close today
For a candidate to emerge as president-elect of the United States (US), he or she must win enough individual states, sometimes by very narrow margins, to surpass the 270 electoral college votes
At least five cases, the candidate with the largest share of the popular vote did not win the US presidency. ….CONTINUE READING
The US election 2024 is just two days away and the rest of the world is watching as Donald Trump battles Kamala Harris
Trump, a former US president, is the flagbearer of the Republican Party. Harris, on the other hand, represents the Democratic Party. The female presidential aspirant is the US’s current vice-president.
Harris, 60, has the strong backing of incumbent President Joe Biden as well as former US President, Barack Obama. A few notable prominent personalities have endorsed Trump for president, including Elon Musk and Hulk Hogan.
There have been five elections in US history – in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016 – in which the candidate who became the president did not win the popular vote.
American citizens do not get to directly choose the president. That task is reserved for the electoral college. Each state is awarded electoral votes based not on its population, but on its representation in the US Congress.
Each state has at least one member of the house of representatives and two members of the senate, meaning every state has at least three electoral votes regardless of its population size.
There are 538 votes in the electoral college, and an absolute majority of those – 270 or more – is needed to win. The constitution also contains a complex contingency procedure should no candidate win an electoral college majority. The choice of president would then be decided by the house of representatives with each state delegation having just one vote.
