Why might the US election look different and complicated?

Once the results of the US election begin to appear, a map of the United States shaded in red and blue (the color of the Republican and Democratic parties) will dominate the screens of news channels and websites amid anticipation around the world for the outcome of the race for the White House.

And sometimes the results seem a little complicated, the winning candidate may win states that seem smaller in size compared to those released by the losing candidate. Sometimes, even fewer votes were cast for the losing candidate than for the president-elect.

So why this complexity? And which states will determine the winner of the presidential race? And what about the other elections that will be held today as well?

Election date

Presidential elections are held once every four years and are scheduled for Tuesday in early November.

Does this mean that the election will be held on the first Tuesday of November? Not always.

US law states that elections take place on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November.

This means that if November 1st happens to be a Tuesday, the election takes place a week later, i.e. on the second Tuesday of the same month.

To make it easier, the rule is that the elections take place on the Tuesday of November 2 to November 8.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris?

The 2024 presidential election marks a dramatic showdown between former President Donald Trump as the GOP nominee and current Vice President Joe Biden's Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.

But the list of candidates isn’t limited to Trump and Harris: there are a number of candidates who aren’t thought to have a real shot at competing.

The Green Party's candidate, activist and physician Jill Stein, is calling for a nationwide strategy to combat global warming.

Activist Chase Oliver is running as a Libertarian Party candidate on a platform that calls for a halt to military support for Israel and Ukraine and the closure of U.S. military bases outside the country.

Independent academic and activist Cornell West is also calling for a drastic reduction in military spending and for the state to pay for health care.

Electoral College

The U.S. presidential election system depends on the distribution of the population in the states, as the state with the largest population has a greater impact on determining the winner of the presidential race than the state with the least population.

This electoral system is known as the Electoral College, whose number and distribution are related to the composition of the Congress in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The Congress has 535 members, divided between 100 senators (two from each state) and 435 members of the House of Representatives, broken down by state population.

The Electoral College has 538 members, 3 more than the total number of members of Congress, who are representatives of Washington, D.C., that are not represented in Congress.

California, the largest state in the country, has 54 electoral college representatives, the same number as Congress (two senators and 52 House members).

Alaska, despite its 1.5 million square kilometers, has only three electoral college members, because it is among the least densely populated states in the country.

And so a state like Florida has 30 representatives in the Electoral College, which is equal to the number of representatives of 9 states.

The U.S. presidential election is won by those who garner at least 270 votes in the Electoral Council.

And the US election is based on the rule of “winner-takes-all”, meaning that the candidate who wins the majority of votes in a particular state gets all of its votes in the electoral college, even if the difference between him and his rival is very small.

The rule, which applies in most states except Maine and Nebraska, is why in some cases the outcome of a Electoral College vote can differ from that of the entire population.

In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton had nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump, but it was the latter who won the election with the support of 304 members of the Electoral College.

Swing States

There are states where the outcome of the presidential race is almost certain because their populations are heavily bipartisan, which makes their campaigns not so big, as they are considered "safe" states.

California, for example, has been voting for Democratic presidential candidates since 1992, so a Kamala Harris victory would come as no surprise. The same would be the case if Trump wins Texas, which has been voting for Republican candidates since 1980.

In contrast, a number of states appear to be voting undecided.

These “swing” states receive a lot of attention from candidates’ campaigns.

And winning these swing states, he believes, will be the key to entering the White House.

And observers say there are seven swing states that could decide the 2024 presidential race.

Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin all voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

The list also includes North Carolina, which voted for Trump in the last election.

And Trump is seeking to snatch victory in the swing states he lost four years ago, while Kamala Harris will try to keep the Democratic Party ahead.

Congressional elections

And while the presidential election and the struggle for swing states will attract a lot of attention, other election events will take place in the country and will also have a lot of significance.

The presidential race will run concurrently with elections for legislators, state governors and members of local administrations.

U.S. voters will have to choose all members of the House of Representatives and about one-third of the Senate.

But why only a third of senators and not all members?

The answer lies in the difference between the terms of office of the senators and the House of Representatives.

A member of the House of Representatives is elected for only two years, so elections to the House of Representatives are held every two years.

A senator's term is six years, meaning that every two years about one-third of the members are elected, with the second and third thirds elected after two and four years.

And to simplify it we have to go back to 2022, when the midterm elections took place on all the seats of the House of Representatives for the Democrats to lose the majority to the Republicans. But in the Senate, 34 seats were up for grabs, with Democrats grabbing a majority of Republicans.

And in 2024, all members of the House of Representatives will be elected, with the 33 senators who did not run in the 2022 elections being contested.

And in 2026, elections will be held to choose all members of the House of Representatives, as well as competition for the seats of 33 senators who did not run in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Mohammed Abdel Raouf BBC News