The 59th U.S. presidential elections are taking place on the 3rd of November, 2020. It is common knowledge that the two major parties, Republicans (also known as GOP-Grand old party) and Democrats, dominate the U.S. political system. The president always comes from one of those two parties. This year’s candidates are the current Republican President Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the representative of the Democratic Party. Both men are competing for the votes of the Electoral College.
Unlike in many other countries, where its citizens elect their president directly, the Americans vote for their candidate indirectly, through Electoral College. The Electoral System was devised in such a way that it would balance the interests and votes of individual states. In other words, this system is supposed to prevent the bigger states with larger populations, such as New York or California, to completely dominate the politics of the entire USA. That means that there is a difference between the popular vote, which tells us how the whole population voted, and the electoral vote, which decides the new president for the next four years. There are 538 electoral votes, and the candidate needs to win 270 votes to become the winner. In all of the fifty states, except two, there is a rule “winner takes all”. This means that the person who has gathered the majority of electoral votes will get all of them.
Delegates of members of the Electoral College are elected by the people, and they in turn vote in accordance with the votes of their state´s population. The number of the electors is in each state equal to the number of the state´s membership in the Senate and House of Representatives, which is in turn determined by the census which is renewed every ten years. Because of that, such states as Alabama, Vermont or Alaska has only three electors, while California has the highest number of electors, which is 55. Because of the principle of “winner takes all” that means that even if one candidate has won 30 votes in that state, he will automatically receive all of the 55 electoral votes. Other states that have high numbers of electorates are New York, 29, Texas, 38, and Florida, 29. When the voters cast their votes and the candidates are appointed the number of electors in accordance with victories in individual states, the Electoral College elects the president of the United States on the 14thof December.
While many states are divided among red states, that almost always vote Republicans, such as Texas, Montana or Kansas, and blue states that always support the Democrats, such as New York, California or Oregon, there are also purple states. Those states are usually divided between two candidates and are known as the “battleground” states during the election campaigns. Such states are Iowa and Ohio.
The statistics of Pew Research Center tell us that 34 percent of American voters do not belong to any party and are “independent”. At the same time 33 percent of the voters are supporters of Democrats and 29 percent are for Republicans. This means that the results of the election depend on the gradual decisions of the “independent” voters who choose one of the two candidates in the end. In 2018 there were 153, 07 million registered voters in the USA. Because of the importance of this year’s elections, high participation is expected, and many voters have already voted from home in the past weeks. Because of the current corona crisis, it is also expected that the results of the elections will be known later as in the previous years.