Political Insight Director Suzanne Evans explains how it works.
The polls officially open today for the US General Election, and all eyes are on Donald Trump and Joe Biden. However, as well as deciding the President and Vice-President, one third of seats in the US Senate, all of the members of the House of Representatives, as well the seats of various State Governors, are also up for grabs.
As neither the President nor Vice-President are elected directly on a ‘first-past-the-post’ system, it is possible that the candidate with the most public votes, the winner of the ‘popular vote,’ won’t actually win. Indeed, candidates who had fewer votes from the general public than their rivals won two out of the last five elections: Trump in 2016, and George W Bush in 2000. Why? Because of the role of the Electoral College, a centuries-old system of deciding who should be President.
The Electoral College is made up of 538 ‘electors,’ each one chosen every four years, by each state, on the ‘first-past-the-post’ voting system. Each state has a different number of electors, equal to the numbers of congressmen and women that state has, and depending on the size of its population. So, for example, California has 55 electors, Texas 38, and the states with the smallest populations, like Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota and Washington DC, all have the minimum number of three electors. The presidential candidate needs to gain a majority of the Electoral College votes – 270 or more – to win the presidency.
How does the Electoral College decide the Presidency? Each state first counts the popular vote, and then, generally, awards all their Electoral College votes to whoever won the poll of ordinary voters in that state. For example, whichever candidate wins 50.1% of the vote in Texas, will be awarded all 38 of that state’s electoral votes. However, rebellions are not unknown. In 2016, Hilary Clinton lost the votes of five electors who were meant to vote for her, and Trump lost two. In theory, it is possible for the Electoral College to ‘go rogue’ in this way, although a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year now makes that less likely.
What happens if there is a tie? After all, it is possible that each candidate gets 269 Electoral College votes (and indeed this did happen in 1824, when four candidates split the electoral vote, denying any one of them a majority). In this event, the President is elected by a vote in the House of Representatives, and the Vice President by a vote in the Senate.
The Electoral College system is why Presidential candidates tend to target ‘swing states’ when it comes to campaigning, rather than trying to win hearts and minds country-wide. On election night, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Iowa, Florida, Minnesota and Michigan are the ones to watch.
As the members of the Electoral College do not meet to cast their official votes for the President and Vice President until December, this system is why we won’t actually know the official result for some time. The official timeline for what happens after polling day is as follows:
- December 8: This is the “Safe Harbor” deadline, the day by which states must resolve any issues with counting their popular votes and choose their Electoral College members.
- December 14: Members of the Electoral College meet in their respective states to cast ballots for the next president and vice president.
- January 6: Congress convenes to tally the Electoral College vote and certify the winner of the election.
However, the speculation as to who has won is likely to begin when we wake up on 4th November, based on results from the swing states. Sooner or later, as the state-by-state popular vote becomes clearer, one candidate may of course concede that the other has won.
Is the result likely to be controversial this time around? Quite possibly. Millions of US citizens have already cast their votes in advance this year, because of the coronavirus pandemic. This process has been hotly debated, not least by Donald Trump, who has claimed repeatedly that mail-in voting, as opposed to voting in person at ballot stations, facilitates voter fraud. It’s a claim that has caused Twitter to label his tweets on the matter as “disputed” and potentially “misleading”. However, the Supreme Court must resolve any legal challenges before Inauguration Day, when power must transfer.
Another question you may be asking, given that this is the first presidential election in which both the major candidates are over 70, is what happens if the President elect is incapacitated by illness? Simply, if the winning candidate stands down before Inauguration Day, the Electoral College would choose their Vice-Presidential running mate to be sworn in instead.
However, assuming all goes smoothly, either Donald Trump or Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the USA, for a four-year term, on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021.
If elected, at 78 Biden will become the oldest person to serve as president on the day of his inauguration, and the first candidate to defeat an incumbent president in 28 years since Democrat Bill Clinton defeated Republican George H. W. Bush in 1992. His running mate, Kamala Harris, would become the first woman to serve as vice-president. If re-elected, Trump would be the oldest president to be inaugurated, as he will be 74 on inauguration day.