How the American election works ? Understanding everything about the US presidential election

USA. The citizens of the United States are choosing between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, but their vote is not counted as in France. The electoral process for the presidential election is more complex.

Who will win the 2024 US presidential election, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump ? While our major live coverage of the election allows us to follow the evolution of the results, we also need to know how the votes designate, at the end of the count, the winner of the presidential election.

And to fully understand the presidential election in the United States, it is important to keep in mind how it works. And it must be said that it remains very far from what we are used to in France. First of all, it is not an election by direct universal suffrage, but an indirect one. American voters do not vote directly for candidates, in this case Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, but for electors, who themselves form an electoral college that votes to designate the winner. These electors are designated in advance by the parties, Republican and Democratic, and each state has a fixed number of electors in advance, based on the number of inhabitants who reside there. The smallest states have a minimum of 3 electors, and the most populous state in the country, California, elects 55 electors in these elections.

The other great singularity of the American presidential elections is that they radically set aside the proportionality of votes. Because – except in Nebraska and Maine – in each State, all the votes are given to the candidate who comes in first, whatever the result. It is therefore sufficient, at for example, to gather just one more vote than his opponent in the state of California to ensure the full support of his 55 electors. This is what is called the “winner-takes-all” system.

The electoral system based on the designation of electors and on “winner-takes-all” actually creates large disparities between the number of votes obtained by a candidate from citizens and the number of votes obtained from electors. It is possible for a president to be elected with fewer votes from citizens than his opponent, as was the case in 2000 when George Bush junior was elected or in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected.

To be a candidate in the American presidential election, you must be at least 18 years old. at least 35 years old, be a U.S. citizen by birth, and have lived on U.S. soil for at least 14 years. You must then officially receive the nomination of one of the two parties that structure American political life, that is, compete in the Democratic or Republican primaries.

To do this, votes are held in each state at the beginning of the presidential election year. Voting begins in the states of Iowa and New Hampshire. “Delegates” are then designated for each party, who represent a candidate and who will officially vote for the woman or man to be invested at the national conventions. But since we know in advance the number of delegates acquired at the cause of each candidate, the names of the invested are generally known in March, well before the conventions.

As in France, the candidates' campaigns benefit from public and private aid. On the other hand, campaign expenses are not capped and break records from year to year.

Public aid

Public aid exists in the United States to finance an electoral campaign, but it only represents a quarter of the candidates' expenses on average. It is allocated by the Federal Election Commission. This fund is fed by a “voluntary tax”. Public funds in fact commit candidates to respect a ceiling, and therefore encourage them to to do without private funds once the party's nomination has been obtained.

Private funds

The “Associations 527”.These are political groups, associations or committees, generally created to promote the candidacy of a personality for a position, but the objectives and vocations of these associations are multiplying. These “527” are authorized to receive donations directly from companies, and can make their own financial contributions to candidates or parties, without any ceiling.

Political Action Committees (PACs). It is through these organizations that individuals or legal entities who wish to participate directly in the financing of a campaign are required to go. A constraint that dates back to 2002. Before, companies, pressure groups or unions could make direct contributions to candidates and their parties. Today, most PACs represent companies, unions or pressure groups.

Capped donations, unlimited budgets

In recent years, the amounts collected by candidates for The American presidential election has soared along with spending: $162 million in 1980, $324 million in 1988, $529 million in 2000, $1.553 billion in 2008, according to figures from the Federal Election Commission, $2.6 billion in 2012, more than $3 billion in 2016, $10 billion in 2020 and $16 billion in 2021. dollars for this 2024 presidential election.

However, on an individual basis, donations are, as in France, capped: in 2014, the Supreme Court removed the cap on individual donations, the limit increasing to $3.5 million every two years. It is then up to the candidates to multiply the structures to reach the astronomical sums mentioned above.

The United States has developed over the course of its history a very specific and rather complex mechanism for electing its president. First, each state organizes the designation of the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate who have its confidence. For this, there are two possibilities, either a caucus or primaries, which concretely allow to elect national delegates (who campaign for a Republican candidate or a Democratic candidate), who themselves elect the official candidate of the party at a national convention.

Primaries and caucuses are organized independently by Democrats and Republicans. Under the terms of This process, which is not at all in the American Constitution, two candidates are nominated to face each other in November. It should also be noted that every American citizen registers, on the electoral lists, as being a Democrat or Republican.

American primaries: what are they?

This is a classic election, which takes place throughout the day: citizens go to a polling station, choose a ballot for a candidate (even if they actually designate the delegates who represent them).

Closed primaries (by default): Only citizens registered on electoral lists as Democrats can vote for the Democratic primary. Conversely, only citizens of Republican obedience can vote for the Republican primary.

Open primaries: A Republican voter can vote in the Democratic primary and vice versa. However, he cannot vote a second time for the Democratic primary (and vice versa).

American Caucuses, What is it?

During a caucus day, hundreds of neighborhood meetings, organized by the parties, are held in a state. The Again, the goal is to designate the delegates who will represent a candidate at the party's national convention, but not by going to a voting booth. In a caucus, we discuss, we debate, we argue, for nearly two hours. Once the merits of the different candidates have been well presented to all, the assemblies vote on show of hands for local delegates, who are responsible for electing national delegates at county conventions.

The method of designation is spread out over time, over several months, according to a schedule set in advance. This allows candidates to continue their campaign for weeks and to address voters in each state more directly. But it also introduces a real inequality of treatment between citizens since we generally know the names of the winners halfway through the election: in the States that vote last, the votes therefore have less importance than those of the electors in the States that vote first.