As the voters in the US are gearing up for polls slated for November 5, 2024, to elect their next president, the big question now is: will America get its first woman president in history or a second Donald Trump reign?
Well, that’s a question of time that by November 6, 2024, the world will be aware who the next President of the US is, and obviously, well wishers, allies, and opponents will be flying in with congratulatory messages.
The US uses an electoral college system, in which each of the 50 states is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win the presidential race.
However, there are seven determinant states, which are referred to as the battleground states or swing states, that normally determine the presidential race in the US. The rest of the states are always dominated by a particular party and are normally predetermined, therefore having less impact on the final outcome of the polls.
The seven key swing states are Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), North Carolina (16), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Arizona (11), Wisconsin (10), and Nevada (6), which together hold 93 electoral college votes.
According to the opinion polls, few United States presidential elections have been as tightly contested as this one. The polls suggest Trump and his Democratic rival, US Vice President Harris Kamala, are neck to neck with just less than a week until the November 5 election.
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Right now the leads in the swing states are so small that it’s impossible to know who is really ahead from looking at the polling averages, but different media houses in the US suggest that Kamala is slightly ahead of Trump.
The polling analysis website 538, which is part of American news network ABC News, says that election polls predict how the population might vote by surveying a sample of voters. Surveys are most commonly conducted by phone, online, post, or, in some cases, through interaction with people.
However, polls are never 100 percent accurate; in some instances, they have been proven wrong. In 2016, they underestimated the popularity of the Republican candidate and eventually won the race.
The same happened in 2020 when the polls undercounted the support for Democrats and predicted a win for Republicans, and the Democrats won the race with Joe Biden.
As we wait for the polls, the international observers must keep the US accountable in order to ensure violence-free elections, transparency, and respect for the rule of law.
