Washington, USA: With the United Statesagen entering the final stage of the presidential election, the end result remains unknown after the voting to be held this Tuesday. If the final two are Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the next President could just win by thousands of votes—to say the least, not a rare occurrence in America’s electoral history.
These margins are minute, the other being 0.03% or 0.06% in the 2020 presidential election where Joe Biden edged out Donald Trump by clinching about 0.03% of the over 150 million ballots cast. Similarly, Donald Trump became President of America in office at the end of 2016 by only a hair’s breadth margin. In the current election there are 240 million registered voters who are expected to vote, and more than 70 million of them have already cast their vote by early voting. And still such a small margin could make a decisive impact?
The answer is to be found in the complicated and final system of the Electoral College—the system which defines the winner in the United States. In contrast, the outcome is not measured as the sum of votes cast in a country, but as how these sum corresponds to the electoral votes of the country’s states. This mechanism makes the result of elections largely depend on several ‘battleground states’ – these are states that don’t have a clear preference for any particular party.
The USA Electoral College consists of 538 elector; the number of these electors can vary depending up on the population of each state in the United States. For example, the number is 55 for California and it is 3 for Wyoming. A candidate has to earn 270 electoral votes which is more than half or an outright majority.
There are some fixed state parties that always give a certain party their voting preference, while the floating states can be either mobilised by one of the major parties. This year, seven states are considered swing states: These states include Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia as well as North Carolina. These Seven states hold a total of 93 electoral votes and are always likely to determine, which ever candidate manages to get the minimum of 270 votes. Thus whoever is able to establish a lead in these states may well be in a position to coast home to the White House.
Why It Doesn’t Help to Win the Popular Vote
Though, being a candidate in the election that decides the US president, one does not have to garner the most votes. This system has attracted criticism in the past several years over diminishing the value of the individual vote.
This election system means that in 48 states (excluding Nebraska and Maine) the candidate with most votes in a state gets all the electoral votes of that state. For example, in California state which has 55 electoral votes, if Trump clinched 29 of them all the 55 electoral votes would be his.
What this entails is that contenders place most of the efforts on sensing and gaining the so called swing state or the battleground state. Therefore, whereas in the overall countries’ population a candidate may garner millions more votes in a general election, they can still lose the presidency if they have no majority in a sufficient number of pivotal states.
Tight races in the last five presidential election cycles
The United State’s election of 2020 between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is information that people use regularly. More than 150 million citizens directly participated in the vote, but the winner’s victory was historically obtained only thanks to 42,918 votes, or 0.025 percentage points. It may well do so, but Biden won Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, thus achieving his 306 electoral vote triumph.
Likewise, the 45th US president, Donald Trump, clinched victory against Hillary Clinton although he was a loser in the popular vote by two and almost three million. The election was decided by less than 0.06%, and Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania decided the issue in this critically close race; a difference of only 70,000 votes.
But one of the closest was in the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. There, Bush triumphed by only 537 votes (or 0.009 percent) of the total, with Florida’s vote proving pivotal. This was the closest election in the American history with claims of fraud and voters manipulation and Supreme Court ruling in a 5-4 where the court stopped recount and made Bush the winner.
Again the Swing States Are the Key
This year, the race remains almost equally close, and there is no leading candidate between Trump and Harris based on poll data. Presumably, the emphasis will be placed again on the so-called swing states. These seven ‘swing’ states give 93 of the 538 total electoral votes so both sides have been focusing in these areas. In the end, those who will be victorious come the 2024 general elections will be the candidates with a majority of the swing state votes.