The presidential race is the battle to become the president of the United States. The winner is not the person who receives the most votes overall, but whoever wins a majority of the individual states’ electoral votes. Each state has a different number of electoral votes based on population. A candidate needs 270 of these votes to win the presidency.
More than 155 million people voted in the 2024 election, which was the second largest turnout in U.S. history. Voters in all 50 states and American Samoa elected a president, and 435 members of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, and 35 governors.
In 2024, Democrat Kamala Harris won the most popular votes and became the first black woman to become the Democratic nominee for president. She won more votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016, and she won almost as many votes as Trump did in 2020.
By June of 2024, Biden’s poor performance in a nationally televised debate with Trump had raised concerns among Democratic leaders and prominent journalists that he might lose the election. In response, he withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris.
The Republican Party uses the color red and stands for less government, lower taxes and gun rights. Their presidential candidate, Donald Trump, campaigned on the theme of making America great again and on tackling illegal immigration. The Electoral College consists of 538 members who each vote for the candidate of their state. There is no tie-breaking method, but a candidate must be on enough state ballots to have a statistically viable chance of winning a majority of electoral votes.