USA 2024: the electoral system with constituency voting

In the United States, every day for months, Americans have found themselves inundated with surveys. And all of them are essentially divided into two: the national data and the college data. In the first, the vice president of the United States and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is in the lead. The range in his favor ranges from 1 to 4 percent. But in the key states, i.e. those hanging between the two candidates, the situation is much more uncertain. In reality, contrary to first impressions, the most important vote is not the national one, but the constituency one. Why’? And how does it work? The popular vote is the total number of votes cast by American citizens during a presidential election. Each voter votes for one candidate for president and one candidate for vice president. But this vote will not determine who will go to the White House, otherwise Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016, having obtained 2.1 percent more votes than Donald Trump. Or, in 2000, Al Gore with 48.4 percent would have beaten Republican George W. Bush, who got 47.9. This is because, if the total number of votes were worth, California, the most populous state in America with around 40 million people, would have an increasingly greater weight than Wyoming, which has 576 thousand inhabitants, or Vermont, 643 thousands. To rebalance the electoral demographic discourse, the American system provides for college voting. The United States is divided into fifty states and each has a certain number of Electors, based on its representation in Congress, i.e. number of senators plus the number of representatives. In total there are 538 Great Electors, a figure that is obtained by adding the 435 representatives of the House, the 100 of the Senate and the three representing the capital, Washington DC. When voters vote, they are actually choosing the Electors, who are obliged to vote for the candidate who won the popular vote in the state of which they represent. The candidate who receives at least 270 votes from the electors wins the election. To achieve success at the constituency, therefore state, level, the candidate must obtain even just one more vote than his opponent: this system is known as “winner-takes-all”. But there is no unanimity of opinion on this criterion. Not everyone in the United States considers this system to be the most representative, but those in favor believe it to be the only one that guarantees even less populous states to have a say. Here two words come into play that have also become quite well known in Italy: “swing states“, that is, states that swing. The reference is to the fact that they are states in the balance between Republicans and Democrats, different from those that traditionally always elect the candidate of one party: Texas is historically considered Republican, New York Democratic. There are seven swing states considered decisive for awarding victory on November 5, voting day: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. Harris is ahead, albeit slightly, in the top three, which represent the so-called “blue wall”, the blue wall, the color of the Democrats, plus Nevada. Red is, however, the color that distinguishes the Republicans. According to recent poll averages, Trump is ahead in North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. On election night these states will be to be followed, knowing that if Harris wins the traditional states assigned to the Democrats, then she will only need to win in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada to be guaranteed of going to the White House. (AGI)
NWY/UBA