US Elections (2024) - Discussion Thread

[FearlessRoar]

The 2024 election will be on Tuesday, 5 November 2024. The winner will serve a term of four years in the White House, starting in January 2025.

The president has the power to pass some laws on their own but mostly they must work with Congress to pass legislation.

On the world stage, the US leader has considerable freedom to represent the country abroad and to conduct foreign policy.

The two main parties nominate a presidential candidate by holding a series of votes called state primaries and caucuses, where people choose who they want to lead the party in a general election.

In the Republican Party, former president Donald Trump won his party's support with a massive lead over his rivals. He became the official Republican nominee at a party convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

For the Democrats, Vice-President Kamala Harris became she official nominee in August at her party's convention in Chicago. She joined the race after President Joe Biden dropped out.

There are also some independent candidates running for president. One of the most prominent such candidates, Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew to former president John F Kennedy, suspended his campaign in late August and has endorsed Trump.

Who will win? and how will the outcome of the election impact the country's future?

 

[FearlessRoar]

Did you know why Americans vote only in November? It's not just a random choice! In 1845, Congress carefully planned Election Day to align with the needs of America's predominantly white, adult male electorate at the time.

The first Tuesday after the first Monday in November was chosen to avoid conflicts with religious practices and economic activities. However, this tradition may seem outdated today, with many finding it challenging to fit voting into their busy schedules.

Should the voting system be updated to accommodate modern lifestyles?

 

[FearlessRoar]

Former US President George W. Bush does not plan to make election endorsement​

Former US President George W. Bush, a Republican, does not plan to make an endorsement or voice how he or his wife Laura will vote in the presidential election in November, a spokesman said on Saturday.

“He retired from presidential politics many years ago,” said the spokesman, who did not wish to be named.

The announcement came a day after Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, announced he would cross party lines and vote for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris over Republican former President Donald Trump.

Cheney, who served as vice president under Bush from 2001 to 2009, said on Friday that “in our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”

Harris said on Saturday endorsements of her by Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, a former US Representative, were "courageous" for putting country ahead of political party.

Mike Pence, who served as Trump’s vice president for four years, has said he will not endorse his former boss but has not backed Harris.

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/united-states/2024/09/08/former-us-president-george-w-bush-does-not-plan-to-make-election-endorsement

 

[dubeTheGoat]

According to Mr Lichtman, who has correctly predicted all elections of this century barring the infamous Bush v Gore, Kamala is expected to return assuming the turnout is nearly same as that of 2020.

 

[deltexas]

Nobody knows who's going to win. It willbe a super tight election. Probably Pennsylvania Georgia decide. Key state Pennsylvania. Trump can lose Arizona Nevada Michigan Wisconsin but if he just flips Georgia and Pennsylvania he gets to 270.

 

[BouncerGuy]

US election polls: Who is ahead - Harris or Trump?

Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is - will the result mean a second Donald Trump term or America’s first woman president?

As election day approaches, we'll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect big events like Tuesday’s presidential debate have on the race for the White House.

Who is leading national polls?

In the months leading up to Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, polls consistently showed him trailing former president Trump. Although hypothetical at the time, several polls suggested Harris wouldn’t fare much better.

But the race tightened after she hit the campaign trail and she developed a small lead over her rival in an average of national polls that she has maintained since. The latest national polling averages for the two candidates are shown below, rounded to the nearest whole number.

In the poll tracker chart below, the trend lines show how those averages have changed since Harris entered the race and the dots show the spread of the individual poll results.

Harris hit 47% during her party’s four-day convention in Chicago, which she brought to a close on 22 August with a speech promising a "new way forward" for all Americans. Her numbers have moved very little since then.

Trump’s average has also remained relatively steady, hovering around 44%, and there was no significant boost from the endorsement of Robert F Kennedy, who ended his independent candidacy on 23 August.

While these national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, they're not necessarily an accurate way to predict the result of the election.

That's because the US uses an electoral college system to elect its president, so winning the most votes can be less important than where they are won.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states.

Who is winning in battleground states?

Right now, the polls are very tight in the seven battleground states, which makes it hard to know who is really leading the race. There are fewer state polls than national polls so we have less data to work with and every poll has a margin of error that means the numbers could be higher or lower.

As is stands, recent polls suggest there is less than one percentage point separating the two candidates in some states. That includes Pennsylvania, which is key as it has the highest number of electoral votes on offer and therefore makes it easier for the winner to reach the 270 votes needed.

Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin had all been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same this year then she will be on course to win the election.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, on the day Joe Biden quit the race he was trailing Trump by nearly five percentage points on average in these seven battleground states.

How are these averages created?

The figures we have used in the graphics above are averages created by polling analysis website 538, which is part of American news network ABC News. To create them, 538 collect the data from individual polls carried out both nationally and in battleground states by lots of polling companies.

As part of their quality control, 538 only include polls from companies that meet certain criteria, like being transparent about how many people they polled, when the poll was carried out and how the poll was conducted (telephone calls, text message, online, etc).

Can we trust the polls?

At the moment, the polls suggest that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are within a couple of percentage points of each other both nationally and in battleground states - and when the race is that close, it’s very hard to predict winners.

Polls underestimated support for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Polling companies will be trying to fix that problem in a number of ways, including how to make their results reflect the make-up of the voting population.

Those adjustments are difficult to get right and pollsters still have to make educated guesses about other factors like who will actually turn up to vote on 5 November.

BBC