On November 5, 2024, American citizens will go to the polls to elect the president of the United States, choosing between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, 60, and Republican former President Donald Trump, 78.
Americans will also vote to renew all 435 seats in the House, where the mandate of the deputies lasts two years, and a third of the Senate – this year 34 seats – where the mandate lasts six. In addition to the White House, therefore, at stake is the majority in Congress, which can make life easier or more complicated for the next president.
Democrats currently hold the Senate, regained in 2021, where they have 51 seats against the 49 conservatives. Republicans instead have the majority in the House, regained in 2022, with 220 seats against the 212 of the opposing party (and 3 vacant). Up for grabs are also 11 governor seats and thousands of state and local elected offices, and there will be votes on almost 150 referendums : citizens will be called to express their opinion on abortion in 10 states, in particular in the swing states of Arizona and Nevada, in another 8 on a constitutional amendment that guarantees only American citizens - as already established by law - the right to vote, in 4 on the legalization of marijuana and in Arizona to approve more stringent measures and greater controls on immigration.
Why USA vote on Tuesday?
As established by Congress in 1845, voting takes place on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November : until then, each state could independently choose when to go to the polls, but it had to take place within 34 days before the first Wednesday in December. In the mid-1800s, a large part of the electorate was made up of landowners or farmers and lived far from the polling stations.
For this reason, a Tuesday in November was chosen - on Sunday, many went to mass, on Wednesday was market day and to get to the polling stations, two days of travel had to be calculated - thus avoiding the planting season (spring and early summer) and the harvest season (late summer and early fall), but also anticipating the rigid temperatures of winter that could have affected turnout. Today, Election Day is a holiday in several states, from New York to Montana, while others require employers to provide paid leave to go to the polls. There are also those who ask for it to become a federal holiday, that is, a holiday in all 50 states of the Union.
Early and Postal Voting
When polls open on Tuesday, however, over 75 million Americans will have already cast their vote, in person or by mail, a method that has become increasingly widespread in recent electoral cycles. It is a very high number, but it will not surpass the record set four years ago, when thanks to Covid 101 million Americans voted early in person (35.8 million) or by mail (65.4 million). Two-thirds of the total turnout, but mostly Democrats because the Republicans, for ideological reasons, were against early voting and did not believe in the dangers of the disease.
Who are the Great Electors?
The names of the two candidates are on the ballot paper, but by voting for them, citizens do not directly elect them. Instead, they nominate "grand electors" chosen by the two parties from among officials, supporters and local politicians who in turn then elect the president. There are 538 in total, a number equal to the sum of the senators (100) and representatives (435) that make up Congress, in addition to the three representatives of the District of Columbia, where the capital Washington is located. The number of grand electors assigned by each state is established in proportion to its inhabitants , with the most populous having a greater weight: California has 54, the smallest like Vermont 3. To become president, one must obtain at least 270 electoral votes out of 538.
The candidate who wins the popular vote in each state gets all the electoral votes, except in Maine and Nebraska, where some votes are assigned by districts: the electors are not obliged to vote for the candidate chosen by the popular vote, but cases of "faithless electors" have so far been very rare and never decisive.
In each state this year, disputes over the vote must be resolved by December 11, the deadline established at the federal level to assign electoral votes to one of the two candidates. On December 17, the Electoral College of the United States - that is, all the electors - meets in each state and will vote to formally elect the president.
Their votes will then be sent to the Senate by December 25, where they will be counted in joint session by the new Congress on January 6, when the new president is proclaimed, who is then sworn in and inaugurated on January 20.
The Two Candidates: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris
The next occupant of the White House will be one of Donald Trump, who on November 15, 2022 at Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Florida, announced his third candidacy about which there were few doubts even after his defeat in the 2020 presidential elections, and Kamala Harris, who took over from Joe Biden between July 21 - the date on which the president withdrew from the race and July 30, the day on which the Democratic Party delegates made a virtual "roll call" to nominate their presidential candidate.
The 2024 US election campaign was in fact unlike any other. On one side, there is a former Republican president revered by half of America and detested by the other half, who overwhelmingly won his party's primaries despite being deeply divisive. On the other hand, there was the current president Joe Biden, 81 years old, who had won the primaries without any challengers but who was then overwhelmed by doubts about his physical and mental health, which were reinforced by the only presidential debate on June 27 in which Obama's former vice president appeared confused and not very lucid.
Who is Kamala Harris?
Three weeks later, due to strong internal pressure from his own party, Biden withdrew from the race for re-election with a letter , and gave his support to the candidacy of his vice president Harris. It was July 21, and at that moment Kamala Harris's electoral campaign began, which actually lasted 107 days, the shortest in modern history.
Harris was born in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964 and has just turned 60. She is the daughter of an important Indian biologist who died in 2009, Shyamala Gopalan, and the Jamaican economist of African origin Donald Harris, with whom she has little relationship, both at the time students at the University of California at Berkeley.
She grew up in California, in college towns in Illinois and Wisconsin and then in Montreal, Canada, before graduating from Howard University, a historically black university in Washington.
She then studied law at Hasting College in San Francisco, where her political career began: she was deputy district attorney of Alameda County from 1990 to 1998, then assistant district attorney in San Francisco and in 2002 she was elected district attorney of the Californian city and in 2010 attorney general of California, that is, minister of Justice of the State. At that moment her career took off : in 2016 she was elected senator of California, in 2020 she ran unsuccessfully for president but in the summer Joe Biden chose her as his vice president in the presidential race . On November 3, 2020 they won the elections and on January 20 she became the first female vice president in the history of the United States. She is married to the lawyer Doug Emhoff, who already had two children from his previous marriage: Ella and Cole.
Who is Donald Trump?
Running against her is Donald Trump, born on June 14, 1946 in Queens, New York. He was the fourth of five children of Fred Trump, a real estate developer who made his fortune building houses in Queens, and Maryanne McLeod. He studied at Kew-Forest High School, then at the New York Military Academy, attended Fordham University and graduated in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968.
Three years later he took control of the family construction company, renaming it the Trump Organization and in 1978 he landed in Manhattan. First he renovated an old hotel, which became the Grand Hyatt, and then he obtained the rights to build the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, the tower where he lived for decades and which helped shape his public image.
Over time, the Trump Organization has morphed into an umbrella for numerous side businesses, from casinos in Atlantic City to private clubs in New Jersey to Mar-a-Lago in Florida, where he will move his residence once he leaves the White House.
At the same time, the New York tycoon was making licensing deals, getting paid to use his last name on all sorts of goods. In total, more than 50 have been counted: steaks, vodka, ice, a Bacardi-based cocktail, a university, various golf courses and dozens of hotels and buildings around the world.
His global popularity is mainly due to the reality show The Apprentice, which he co-produced and hosted from 2004 to 2015, making the phrase "You're Fired" famous. After thinking twice more, on June 16, 2015 he ran for president with a speech given on the escalators of Trump Tower. No one thought he had any chance, but instead he swept the primaries and then in November he beat Hillary Clinton, becoming the 45th president of the United States.
He banned citizens of some Muslim countries from entering the country, implemented tariffs, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, tore up the Iranian nuclear deal, signed the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices.
In 2020, he ran again, but was defeated by Joe Biden and claimed that the elections had been stolen. He is the only president to have been impeached twice but was acquitted both times by the Senate. He has two ex-wives – Ivana, who died in 2022, and Marla Maples – and a third wife, Melania. They have five children - Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric from his first marriage, Tiffany from his second and Barron from his third.
The Key Themes of the Challenge
The challenge between Harris and Trump will influence the fate of the entire planet. On one side, there is a former president who for much of his term claimed economic successes, who used an iron fist in international relations promising to make America great again. On the other, there is a vice president who is considered by many to be nothing more than a continuation of the Biden administration.
The two candidates have opposing positions on almost everything, starting with the current president. Trump believes that Biden was elected illegitimately. On the economy, the former president promises new tax cuts and the vice president would like to eliminate some of them.
On trade, Harris is against tariffs while Trump proposes to impose 10% on all imported goods. As for wars, the vice president confirms her support for Ukraine, while the former president promises to put an end to both conflicts. In Ukraine, in particular, he believes he would do it in 24 hours. Trump is also critical of NATO's performance, and has previously threatened to pull the United States out of the Atlantic Alliance if other countries do not pay enough.
In domestic politics, however, the most divisive issue is abortion. The judges to the Supreme Court helped overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling that guaranteed it at the federal level since 1973, while Harris promises to give women back the right to choose.
On climate, Harris is in favor of the demands of the Green New Deal, while Trump had already withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and would like to soften regulations, favoring the auto or oil industries.
The Most Important Stages of the Electoral Campaign
The primaries were a formality for both parties. Incumbent President Joe Biden won without a challenger, while challenger Donald Trump triumphed over Nikki Haley, leaving her only Vermont and the District of Columbia. It seemed like a campaign without any dramatic twists, between the two oldest candidates in history.
For a long time Trump accused his rival of being old and not very lucid, while Biden retorted that he was only four years older than his opponent. During the televised debate on June 27, however, Biden had difficulty speaking and finishing his speeches, and uttering coherent sentences, and pressure from his party colleagues forced him to withdraw from the electoral race on July 21.
A week earlier, on July 13, Trump faced an assassination attempt and had been wounded in the ear in an attack in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Two days later, the Republican convention began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Trump announced that his "running mate," the vice-presidential candidate, would be J.D. Vance, 40, a senator from Ohio elected in 2022. A few days later, with Biden's withdrawal, Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate.
She secured the party's support in 48 hours and on July 30, she obtained the nomination with a virtual "roll call" that prevented a chaotic open convention in Chicago, Illinois, from July 19 to 22, but which the Republicans called anti-democratic.
In this way, they explained, the votes of millions of voters who chose Biden in the primaries were nullified. As her "running mate," Harris chose Tim Walz, 60, governor of Minnesota and former congressman.
The election campaign, then, started again on July 21st and it was the shortest in American history. It was 107 days in which everything happened with a new assassination attempt on Trump in Florida, a debate between the two candidates in which the Republican candidate claimed that immigrants were eating pets in a small town in Ohio; a television interview in which the vice president admitted to having a gun that she would not hesitate to use against someone who breaks into her house and so on.
What the polls say?
After her sudden entry into the electoral contest, Harris generated enthusiasm among Democratic supporters resigned to voting for Biden and had a "nomination bump", a surge in the polls that continued until the debate on September 10. Since then, her numbers have begun to drop steadily, and Trump has recovered.
What counts is the vote in the seven swing states that will decide the election - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In all seven, the candidates are separated by very few points in the polling averages between 0.3 and 2.6 percentage points, well within the margin of error. In almost every state, moreover, there are polls that give one or the other the victory, or signal a tie.
The odds of winning
According to the polls, Trump would be the one to return to the White House.
When Will We Know US Election results?
It could take days to find out who the next American president will be, especially if the race is decided by a few thousand votes as in 2020, when Biden was declared the winner only on the Saturday after Pennsylvania was awarded by the next morning, all seven swing states had not yet declared a winner.
The delays in 2020 were due in particular to the huge number of postal votes received – 65 million – and to the fact that many states, including Pennsylvania, did not allow officials to “pre-process”, that is, to check and prepare the ballots before Election Day.
This year, some states including Michigan have changed their laws to allow pre-processing and speed up the count, but if the election is decided by a handful of votes, the process could be similar to that of 2020. In the seven swing states, polls close between 7 and 10 p.m. American time. The first clues about how the presidential election will go will come from Georgia, then from North Carolina. If they are firmly in Trump's hands – as expected – we will have to wait a little longer to see who might win.
Harris' road to the White House passes mainly through the three "blue wall" states - Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania - which are however the ones where the counting will take place most slowly.
The precedents
In 2020, Joe Biden was declared the winner on Saturday morning, four days after the vote, when his victory in Pennsylvania was certain. The current president obtained 81.2 million votes, and 51.3% of the popular vote, which earned him 306 electoral votes. Donald Trump stopped at 232 electoral votes and 46.8% of the popular vote, but in any other election his 74.2 million votes would have won him the presidency. In total, 158.4 million Americans voted, 62.8% of those eligible to vote.
In 2016, Trump surpassed Hillary Clinton, obtaining 304 electoral votes against the 227 of the former first lady, senator and secretary of state. She stopped at 62.9 million against the 65.8 of his opponent, almost three million less, with a total turnout of 136 million citizens, 54.8% of the total. Trump thus became the fifth president in history to win the election despite losing the popular vote, after John Quincy Adams in 1828, Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and George W. Bush in 2000.
Never in the history of the United States had anyone won, however, collecting so many fewer votes than his challenger. Clinton triumphed in the largest states by a greater number of votes, over 4 million, but lost in the swing states. In Michigan the margin was 10,704 votes, in Pennsylvania 44,292 and in Wisconsin 22,748.
