Why is the US election important?
Published: 25th October 2024
Updated: 8th November 2024
Published: 25th October 2024
Updated: 8th November 2024
On 5 November, people in the US headed to the polls to decide who they wanted to be their next president, with the whole world watching. But why should we care?
Every four years, the US get to vote for their next president. The current president, Joe Biden, isn’t standing again despite only serving one four-year term.
Since 1951, the US Constitution (a set of rules that the country is run by) has said that a person can only be elected as president twice. The only president to have ever served more than two terms is Franklin D Roosevelt, who won four elections in a row from 1932, although he died just a few months after winning the 1944 election.
With Joe Biden out of the race the choice was between the current vice president, the Democratic Party’s Kamala Harris, or the Republican Party’s Donald Trump, who’s been president once before.
There were also some independent candidates, but they are always very unlikely to win as they normally get only a small percentage of the vote. The US has only ever had one president who didn’t belong to a political party: George Washington, who was the first ever president, back in 1789!
iStock: The White House is where the president of the United State lives. Who will be moving in soon?
The US election is complicated, but each of the 50 states have their own elections. People’s votes technically go towards choosing ‘electors’, and there are 538 in total across the country. That means a candidate needs to get the votes of 270 electors to become president.
Most of the states lean towards Democrat or Republican and are unlikely to change. So, the result is only really in doubt in a handful of ‘battleground’ or ‘swing’ states. These are states that in the past had moved between support for the Democrats and the Republicans. The seven states that could decide the result this year are Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.
Getty: Donald Trump is a former US president up for election as the Republican candidate
The two candidates are Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris. Here are a few quick facts:
Donald Trump
Kamala Harris
Getty: Kamala Harris is the Democrat candidate and current vice-president in the US
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