In the United States today is election day. Americans vote for president, Congress, state legislatures, and various local government offices. Unlike most countries in the world, which organize their elections on Sunday, the United States traditionally votes on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
The presidential elections undoubtedly arouse the greatest interest in the country and abroad. Whoever wins them will be the 47th president of the country.
On one side is the Democratic vice president, who in July quickly replaced aging leader Joe Biden, who declined to run for a second term. Sixty-year-old Kamala Harris may today become the first woman to head the largest economic and military power in the world.
On the other side is 78-year-old former President Donald Trump, who is making a spectacular political comeback after winning the presidency in 2021. left the White House in disarray after being the subject of two impeachment proceedings and later becoming the first former president to be convicted of a felony.
The race for the White House has been filled with drama, including two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, and has also been marked by a race in a divided country.
Each of the two rivals is confident of his victory. If the polls are to be believed, it will come down to a few tens of thousands of votes in seven key states. The seven “wavering states“ are of huge importance to the election, as they are not clearly oriented towards either of the two major parties.
From Michigan to Arizona, through Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris focused almost all of their efforts to pull out the victory.
Nearly 80 million Americans out of a total of 244 million voters, including Kamala Harris, have already voted early, according to early voting tracking platform Election Lab. at the University of Florida. Her challenger is expected to vote in person on Tuesday near her home in the same state.
What will happen next remains the great unknown.
Donald Trump never conceded defeat in the 2020 presidential election, after which his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The United States, a federal state, has a system of indirect voting, in which the candidate who manages to secure a majority of a total of 538 electors is elected president, i.e. at least 270.
The American president is elected for a four-year term. He may serve for a maximum of two terms, whether consecutive or not.
In addition to the presidential elections, Americans will also vote for the renewal of Congress: 34 senatorial seats (out of a total of 100) and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are at stake.
In the upper house, senators are elected for a six-year term. Republicans hope to wrest the majority from Democrats. The representatives have a two-year mandate. Democrats are hoping to take back that chamber, which currently has a Republican majority.