2024 US Elections: Numbers, key states and the battle for the Senate and the House of Representatives

Candidates, key states, funding… Here are some numbers for the US presidential election, which will be held on November 5.

Two candidates: Republican former US president Donald Trump and Democratic vice presidential Kamala Harris.

In every US presidential election there are a few independent candidates who fail to break the two-party divide. This year’s candidates will include, among others, environmentalist Jill Stein and academic Cornell West, who are expected to garner a very small percentage of the vote.

The US president is elected for a four-year term and can serve two terms, consecutive or not. This means that if Harris is elected in November, she could run for president again in 2028, but not Trump.

The election will be held on November 5. Traditionally, U.S. presidential elections are held on the first Tuesday in November.

The seven swing states – Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina – will decide who wins the presidency.

Both candidates are focusing their latest efforts to persuade voters and win the election there. As Trump and Harris go head-to-head, as polls show, the outcome is expected to be decided by a few tens of thousands of votes.

On November 5, Americans not only elect their next president, they also vote to fill 34 seats in the Senate (out of a total of 100) and all the seats (435) in the House of Representatives.

In the upper house, senators are elected for six-year terms. Republicans hope to make gains on November 5 and succeed in overturning the Democrats’ small majority in that body.

Members are elected for two-year terms and Democrats hope to regain control of the House of Representatives, where Republicans now hold a majority.

Americans vote for 538 electors who then nominate the president. To be elected, a candidate must garner 270 electors.

The number of electors each state elects varies and is calculated by adding the number of senators (two for each state) to the number of members it has in the House of Representatives, which depends on each state’s population.

According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, approximately 244 million Americans are eligible to vote.

The 2018 and 2022 midterm elections, as well as the 2020 presidential election, recorded the highest turnout rates in decades, according to Pew Research Center data.

For example, “about two-thirds” of voters cast ballots in 2020, “the highest percentage for a national election since 1900,” according to the same source.

As official figures show, Kamala Harris’ campaign had spent $270 million as of September. Trump’s team just $78 million.

According to the New York Times, the Democrats have raised more than $1 billion since July, when they launched their campaign after Joe Biden dropped out of the race. That’s unprecedented in just one quarter.

More than 41 million Americans had voted early for the election as of Sunday, Oct. 27, according to a count by the University of Florida.

In nearly all U.S. states, voters can vote early either by absentee ballot or in person.

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