The 2024 election, explained

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN

(CNN) — Who, what, when and where? It can be valuable to take a step back from the day-to-day news and look with a wider lens at the election playing out.

Here are answers to some more general questions that can get lost at the end of the campaign.

When is Election Day?

US law requires a presidential election every four years. These general elections, since 1845, are required to occur on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This year, that date is November 5.

States oversee their own elections, which means polling times vary from state to state. The first polls close on Election Day at 6 p.m. ET in some counties in Indiana and Kentucky, and the last polls close at 1 a.m. ET Wednesday, November 6, in Alaska. Waves of state polls close every hour in between. But many millions of Americans will vote early in person or by mail.

Get information about your state in CNN’s Voter Handbook.

Why does Election Day last more than one day?

Each state conducts their election a little bit differently. Some, like in Washington state, Oregon and Utah, are done almost entirely by mail, a process that stretches for weeks.

Every state has some form of early voting available, which opens the process to people who can’t get to the polls on Election Day and ensures as many people cast ballots as possible.

Who are the candidates this year?

The Democrat is Vice President Kamala Harris, who is on the ballot with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate.

The Republican is former President Donald Trump, who is running this year with Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.

There are other candidates, and the options vary by state. The Libertarian Party’s Chase Oliver is on most ballots, and the Green Party’s Jill Stein is an option in most states as well. The former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also on the ballot in many states. He had been running as an independent but has since endorsed Trump.

That said, the vast majority of Americans will vote for either Harris or Trump.

Read more about the presidential candidates.

Why are Trump and Harris the main options?

The two major parties, Republicans and Democrats, each held primary elections across the country earlier in the year.

Despite the fact that many Republicans repudiated Trump after his supporters stormed the Capitol building following his loss in the 2020 election, the former president easily emerged from a crowded field of primary candidates to be the GOP nominee again this year. It’s the third straight election where Trump is the Republican nominee.

For Democrats, President Joe Biden dominated the primaries and faced only token opposition. But after the primary season, concerns about Biden’s age – he’s 81 – accelerated. After CNN hosted a debate in June in which Biden fared poorly against Trump, the president bowed to pressure and dropped out of the race before Democrats held their nominating convention.

Biden’s endorsement of Harris, his vice president, helped make her the consensus nominee despite the fact that she did not take part in primaries. No Democrats rose to challenge her at the convention in August.

When will we know who won?

It could take a while. CNN did not project a winner in 2020 until four days after Election Day. Multiple states were decided by incredibly close margins that year.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton conceded the day after Election Day even though counting was still happening in multiple states. She acknowledged she would not win.

Trump is unlikely ever to acknowledge defeat. If there are close margins in key states, it could take days to determine a winner. The good news is that many states have made changes since 2020 to make it easier for election officials to get a head start on processing mail-in ballots, which take longer to count.

In 2000, one of the closest elections in US history, the winner was not apparent until 36 days after the election when the US Supreme Court ended recounts in Florida. Things were complicated that year by flawed paper ballots in some Florida counties, something that should not be a problem this year.

It could also end up not being that close of an election at all, and networks like CNN could project a winner on election night. We shall see.

What are the main issues?

One overriding issue is the cost of living. Prices spiked after the Covid-19 pandemic, and Trump has capitalized on a nostalgia people have for a time when the cost of groceries was lower. His plan to impose across-the-board tariffs on foreign goods might spike prices further, according to economists, but he has an advantage over Harris on the economy, according to polling.

Trump voters are also motivated by immigration. He would deport millions of migrants who crossed the border illegally, and he would all but shut down the US border.

Read more about the promises Trump has made on the campaign trail.

For Harris voters, the issue of abortion is key. After the Supreme Court, with a third of justices appointed by Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade, Harris has framed reproductive rights as matter of personal freedom and has pledged to protect those rights.

There are ballot initiatives in key states to enshrine abortion rights. The issue is helping drive a gender gap in the vote, according to polling.

Read more about Harris’ campaign promises.

There is also the key issue of democracy. Trump was accused by the Justice Department of election interference after he tried to overturn the 2020 election results. That’s a nonstarter for many Democrats. Republicans, meanwhile, have largely grown to accept Trump’s role in the effort to keep Biden from the White House after he won in 2020. And many of them, after years of Trump questioning the system, now doubt the 2020 results themselves.

Trump was convicted on felony charges in New York related to hush money payments before the 2016 election. His sentencing is set for late November, meaning it will be after Election Day. However, his felony convictions, or even the possibility of jail time, don’t make Trump ineligible to serve as president.

How is a president elected in the US?

More than 150 million people are likely to cast ballots for the office of president on or before Election Day. But it’s 538 electors who will choose the president in a process that snakes through December and January.

When voters cast ballots, they are actually selecting a slate of electors tied to the candidate who wins the popular vote in each state.

The electors will then cast votes for president and vice president in each state’s capitol on December 17. That meeting is also known as the Electoral College, and it’s required in the Constitution.

Those electoral votes will be counted in the chamber of the House of Representatives on January 6, 2025, with the new Congress looking on.

The new president takes office on January 20, 2025.

How many electoral votes does each state get?

The number is tied to the size of a state’s congressional delegation, with one electoral vote for each senator and member of Congress.

The smallest states – Alaska, Delaware, the two Dakotas, Vermont and Wyoming – each get three.

With each additional member of Congress, a state gets one more elector. The most populous states are California (54 electoral votes), Texas (40 electoral votes) and Florida (30 electoral votes).

These numbers can change every 10 years because the Constitution requires an official population count, or census, and the number of congressional seats is then reapportioned. The most recent census occurred in 2020, so the number of electoral votes has changed.

Voters in Washington, DC, also get three electoral votes thanks to the 23rd Amendment, but they have no voting representation in the House or Senate. Other US citizens who don’t live in a state, like Puerto Ricans, aren’t so lucky when it comes to electoral votes.

How many electoral votes are there, and how many does it take to win the White House?

There are 538 electors. That figure is equal to 100 senators and 435 members of Congress, plus three votes for Washington, DC.

A majority of electoral votes is 270. Winning the White House is a mapping exercise for presidential candidates. They must pair the states that are safely in their column with enough battleground states to get to 270.

What are the battleground states in 2024?

There are thought to be seven states that could conceivably be won by either candidate. As a result, the campaigns have focused their energy in these areas. They can be broken up into two general categories.

3 Midwestern battlegrounds, aka “the blue wall” – These are the manufacturing and union-heavy states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. They used to be more reliably Democratic but have shifted in recent years as their populations have changed and as Trump has appealed to White voters without a college degree.

When Trump won the White House in 2016, he won all three. When Biden won in 2020, he won all three. If Harris wins all three this year, she will likely have the electoral votes to be president. But polls suggest close races in all three. Turnout will be key, which for Harris means appealing to suburban women and Black voters. All three states have urban centers.

The blue wall states usually vote the same way. The last time they did not all go to the same candidate was in 1988 – notably also a year when California was red and West Virginia was blue. In those eight elections since 1988, the only time the blue wall states went to a Republican was in 2016, when they were won by Trump.

4 Sun Belt battlegrounds – These states with growing populations include Arizona and Nevada in the West and North Carolina and Georgia in the East. Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina used to be more reliably Republican. Trump won North Carolina twice, but the margins were close in 2020. The last Democrat to win there was Barack Obama in 2008. Biden was the first Democrat to win Georgia since Bill Clinton in 1992 and Arizona since Clinton in 1996.

1 vote in Nebraska is a battleground – 48 states award their electoral votes winner-take-all to the victor in their state. Nebraska and Maine do it differently, awarding votes by congressional district. The state of Nebraska is safe Trump territory, but the congressional district around Omaha is a battleground. That one vote could end up being very important in the event of a close race in the Electoral College.

Note: It’s the reverse situation in Maine, the only other state that does not award all of its electors to the statewide winner. Trump could pick up a single electoral vote in Maine.

What if there’s a tie?

The total number of electoral votes, 538, is an even number, which means a tie is conceivable. It’s happened once before, in 1800, although the rules were a bit different then. If no candidate reaches the 270 votes needed to win the election, the new Congress would pick the president and the Senate would pick the vice president in what’s known as a “contingent election.”

Each of the 50 states would get one vote (sorry, Washington, DC). Republicans currently control more House delegations. Even if they lose the overall House majority in November, Republicans would still probably control more than half of the congressional delegations. Delegations in which there’s an even split between Republicans and Democrats (currently there are two) would not be counted.

Bottom line: An Electoral College tie would likely result in a Trump presidency.

In the Senate, it’s a simpler process. Each senator would get one vote to select the vice president. Democrats have a slim majority at the moment, but they are defending more seats on Election Day and there’s a good chance Republicans will control the Senate come January.

How are members of Congress elected, and why is the balance of power key?

Every two years, every seat in the House, all 435 of them, is up for grabs. Most of those seats are relatively safe for either Republicans or Democrats, but there is always the possibility that the majority changes hands.

Democrats are favored in 208 races and Republicans are favored in 212, according to preelection House race ratings from Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. With just 15 races listed as toss-ups, it’s likely that neither party will have a very large majority next year.

Changes in the balance of power have actually happened more in recent elections. This year, Republicans are heading into the election with a small majority, and it’s entirely possible that Democrats win their own small majority for the next House even if they lose the White House and control of the Senate.

It’s important for either party to control the House. Presidents need control to enact their priorities. The out-of-power party wants control to block the president’s priorities. In an ideal world, the two sides would work together to find consensus on issues like immigration and the tax code.

How do things work in the Senate?

It’s a little bit different in the Senate, where only a third of the seats are up for grabs every two years. Democrats are on defense as they try to defend their slim Senate majority.

Of the 34 seats for which there is an election this year, Democrats are defending 20 and Republicans are defending 13. Two of those Democratic seats, in West Virginia and Montana, are likely to be won by Republicans, according to the Senate race ratings. Another one, in Ohio, is rated as a toss-up.

Democrats hope they can pick up an unexpected win in either Texas or Florida, but Republicans are on pace to have a slim majority in the Senate next year. Assuming Republicans hold all of the seats they currently hold, they can control the chamber if they flip one Democratic seat and win the White House (the vice president breaks ties in the Senate) or win two seats regardless of the outcome of the presidential race.

No matter who has control of the Senate, neither party is expected to have a supermajority. That’s important because senators generally abide by a custom of respecting the filibuster. It usually requires 60 votes to enact major pieces of legislation, although both Republicans and Democrats have found ways around that in recent years.

Republicans found a way to enact tax cuts under Trump without 60 votes. Democrats did the same thing with their Inflation Reduction Act, which, among other things, aims to transition the US to a greener economy.

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