…Here we go again, folks (Picture: AFP / Getty)
‘A long, brutal, drawn-out, miserable slog.’
This is what Matt Holt, a Washington DC-based election reporter, says people should expect from the 2024 US Presidential Election.
Déjà vu, too, what with the two candidates on the ballot being current US President Joe Biden and former US President Donald Trump… again.
Sounds simple enough, right? But experts told Metro.co.uk that American elections are a lot to get your head around.
And with misinformation likely to be rampant – again – this year, here’s our guide to this year’s miserable slog- oh, we mean, the US presidential elections.
When is Election Day 2024?
It happens every four years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
This year’s election will be on Tuesday, November 5. The winner will be in the White House for four years starting in January 2025.
Presidents serve four-year terms (Picture: AP)
What people think of as ‘election day’ is actually part one of a two-part election.
The first – called the presidential general election – sees people tick the box of the candidate they want to be president and vice president. After this, there’s a second round of voting. Not by regular people, but by the Electoral College.
Hold up, what is the ‘Electoral College’?
No, you can’t study at this college. College here is a rather clunky way of saying a group of people who elect the president and vice president.
Stay with us here, but the process of the Electoral College isn’t a popular vote. Some candidates win the Electoral College – and a seat in the Oval Office – but lose the popular vote.
Let’s say someone living in Texas – which has 40 electors – votes for Trump. In an annoyingly pedantic way, that person isn’t voting for Trump, they’re voting for the 40 electors to vote for Trump.
That Texan is, in effect, electing the electors to elect the president.
Biden has seen issues such as the Israel-Hamas war and inflation deal blow to his approval ratings (Picture: Getty Images)
Donald Trump’s presidential bid, meanwhile, has been tarred by his court appearances (Picture: AFP(
The founding fathers at the time thought this was a great idea to ensure that states with smaller populations didn’t feel ignored. Modern-day critics, however, feel it’s rooted in racism and is wildly convoluted.
Holt is among them. ‘It’s an archaic system, absolutely,’ he says.
Holt, who has bylines in the news website The Messenger and the government affairs magazine National Journal, says that if you’re already confused, you’re about to get even more so.
‘The amount of electoral votes in each state, assigned by the Constitution, totals how many US Senators and US House members each state has,’ he says.
‘For example, my home state Rhode Island has two senators and two House members, so they get four electoral votes.
‘There are 538 electors. There are 535 members of Congress between the Senate and the House, and DC gets three electoral votes due to the …read more
Source:: Metro
