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The US presidential election is ending. What's next?
In addition, depending on the vote, the Senate will be renewed by one-third, and the House of Representatives will be completely re-elected. The ability of future US presidents to carry out their policies will depend largely on which political party controls Congress.
The first results of the election are expected early Wednesday morning. However, since the candidates for the post of the 47th head of state, Republican Donald Trump (78) and Democratic Party Kamala Harris (60), approached this stage with a narrow lead, there was a possibility of determining the winner. This takes longer.
There are nearly 170 million voters in the United States, but the election results are determined by residents of small swing states.
In fact, on one website, the results were out almost immediately. In this election, America’s first votes were evenly split between Trump and Harris. Both candidates for the White House received three votes each from residents of Dixville Notch, a small town in New Hampshire on the U.S.-Canada border. Traditionally, this is where the first polling station in the U.S. opens at midnight on general election day. Locals, counting on both hands, gather at the local Balsams Hotel to drop off their completed ballots in the ballot box. The votes will be counted immediately, the results will be announced, and the polls will close immediately.
The results also reflect the balance of power between Trump and Harris heading into Election Day. Even in opinion polls, the gap between them is within 1-2 percentage points, which is a statistical margin of error. They held their final rallies in Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. In the current cycle, this is one of the so-called seven swing states, where the election results are traditionally determined due to the nature of the US electoral system. In fact, the entire election campaign took place in these states. The main attention, financial and other resources of the campaign team were devoted to the election campaign in this state. Moreover, as the analytical resource axios.com points out, only 13 counties really matter, not these seven states. In this sense, the American vote is not at all equally important in determining the winner.
On Election Day, the candidates spent time at their campaign headquarters awaiting results. Trump went to Mar-a-Lago, his private estate in Florida, and Harris enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he graduated in 1986.
At a rally at Penn State on his final day of campaigning, Trump vowed to enlist the help of Americans to “fire Kamala and save America.” Harris also campaigned in Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state with 19 electoral votes. On her final day, she “went out into the crowd.” Her motorcade drove through residential areas of the city. Two campaign volunteers joined her at her door with signs and clipboards. The vice president was calling. Her hostess opened the door, hugged Harris, and excitedly told her she had already voted for her. Harris promised to be “a president for all Americans.”
But while recent U.S. presidents have made similar promises, social divisions have deepened. An ABC News poll found that 74 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.
The election environment speaks for itself. The campaign was highly polarized, full of mutual insults. Trump was the target of two assassination attempts, and miraculously survived the first.
Election Day has arrived. Unprecedented security measures have been put in place. More than two dozen states have said they are prepared to send security forces to Washington, D.C., in the weeks following the election to prevent unrest. And the FBI has set up a command post to monitor all local offices for election threats. According to axios.com, the situation has been so tense that several schools have refused to host polling stations.
At press time, voting was proceeding generally smoothly, but CNN and other media outlets reported isolated incidents and problems with ballots and computer systems at polling stations in Georgia, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
The winner of American elections is determined by a two-tiered system, not just by the number of votes.
A general vote will be held. At this point, Americans decide which political party will represent each state's Electoral College slate. The number of electors varies from state to state, depending on the region's representation in Congress. The results of the vote form the Electoral College, which consists of 538 members.
The Electoral College votes. Officially, they decide who will be president of the United States. The winner must receive at least 270 votes. Voters are theoretically free to vote as they wish, but in practice they almost always support candidates from their own party.
The party affiliation of each state voter is known from the first round, so the winner can be determined later. Almost all states have a winner-take-all system. That is, the winning party in that state gets all the electoral votes, and the losing party gets none. This system sometimes results in one party having more votes and the other party having more voters in the overall national vote count. This also happened in the 2000 and 2016 elections.
Most states traditionally support one of the parties and its candidates. Therefore, the main struggle is taking place in the "swing states", where the outcome of the vote is unclear until the last moment. In this election cycle, such states are Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
The Electoral College votes will be counted and certified by the U.S. Congress on January 6, 2025. Once a winner is determined, they will begin preparing future teams for the White House and other federal offices. The new president and vice president will be inaugurated at the inauguration ceremony on January 20, 2025.