Donald Trump has been declared victorious in the 2024 US Presidential Election, but he won’t be moving into the White House just yet.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former US President Donald Trump spent months trying to persuade the American people that they should be the next leader of the nation, and today we found out who American voters chose as their next leader.
But in terms of how voting works in America, what people think of as ‘election day’ is actually part one of a two-part election.
The first – called the presidential general election – sees people tick the box of the candidate they want to be president and vice president. After this, there’s a second round of voting. Not by regular people, but by the Electoral College.
When will Trump become president?
Donald Trump won’t take office as the new president until January 20, 2025.
This is because, despite winning the required 270 electoral college votes, there are still a few stages of the election left.
Election officials must confirm the official tally from each state, and this can in some cases take weeks. Oregon has the latest deadline to do this, on December 11.
Following this, on December 17, the appointed presidential electors from each state cast their official vote for the candidate who won in their state.
These votes will then be counted in Congress on January 6.
It is only after these steps that the inauguration can go ahead, which is a ceremony held on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington DC.
It is on this date that Trump will officially begin his term as president.
What is the Electoral College?
No, you can’t study at this college. College here is a rather clunky way of saying a group of people who elect the president and vice president.
Stay with us here, but the process of the Electoral College isn’t a popular vote. Some candidates win the Electoral College – and a seat in the Oval Office – but lose the popular vote.
Let’s say someone living in Texas – which has 40 electors – votes for Trump. In an annoyingly pedantic way, that person isn’t voting for Trump, they’re voting for the 40 electors to vote for Trump.
That Texan is, in effect, electing the electors to elect the president.
The founding fathers at the time thought this was a great idea to ensure that states with smaller populations didn’t feel ignored. Modern-day critics, however, feel it’s rooted in racism and is wildly convoluted.
Matt Holt, a Washington DC-based election reporter, is among them. ‘It’s an archaic system, absolutely,’ he says.
Holt, who has bylines in the news website The Messenger and the government affairs magazine National Journal, says that if you’re already confused, you’re about to get even more so.
‘The amount of electoral votes in each state, assigned by the Constitution, totals how many US Senators and US House members each state has,’ he says.
‘For example, my home state Rhode Island has two senators and two House members, so they get four electoral votes.
‘There are 538 electors. There are 535 members of Congress between the Senate and the House, and DC gets three electoral votes due to the 23rd Amendment.
‘First to 270 electoral votes wins. Most Americans want the Electoral College to go away.’
Who are the electors?
The electors are appointed by the political parties in each state and they promise to vote for that party’s candidate. The party often chooses elected state officials, state party leaders or locals with ties to the candidate.
Do all of a state’s Electoral College votes go to one candidate?
Other than Maine and Nebraska, states award all their Electoral College votes to whoever won the popular vote.
We know, we know, this doesn’t make sense. Didn’t we say the popular vote doesn’t decide the president? Well, on a state level, the election to vote for the Electoral College tends to be a popular vote. On a national level, however, it doesn’t.
Circling back to our Texan voter, his vote for Trump helped score the Republican candidate a 50.1% win, so Texas awarded him all 40 of its votes.
But if Trump won by 100%, he wouldn’t get any ‘more’ votes. He’d still get the 40 Electoral College votes. Got it? We just about do, to be honest.
Why is a ‘swing state’ important?
Swing states don’t consistently vote blue or red, making them key in deciding the election outcome.
‘Only seven states will decide who is the next president – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania,’ Holt says.
‘Most of the campaigning will take place in those states. Both campaigns might make attempts to expand the map but for the most part, that’s where the action will take place.’
Trump has won North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia so far. Michigan, Nevada and Georgia are still counting votes, but all three are leaning towards a Trump win.
Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes, which is the most of any swing state.
Has a candidate ever lost the popular vote but still become president?
Yes. We told you it’s a weird system.
In 2016, Trump seemingly won by an Electoral College landslide of 304 compared to Hillary Clinton’s 227. Yet more US voters cast votes for Clinton. She had 65,853,514 ticks in the box next to her name compared to 62,984,828 for Trump.
When will the full US Election results be announced?
We can’t be sure when we will know the result of the US Election. Although we know that Trump has won the required 270 Electoral College votes, not all the votes have been counted yet and some states are yet to declare a result.
It can take days, or sometimes even weeks for the full results to be announced.
Even then, the results are not properly finalised for months, so there’s a lot to watch out for in the days following the US Election.
Members of the Electoral College are scheduled to convene in each state on December 17 to certify the result, while the declaration of the result in Congress will occur on January 6, 2025.
Trump will then be sworn into office in a ceremony known as the inauguration.
The period between the election and the inauguration is known as transition and gives the new administration time to appoint cabinet ministers and make plans for their term.
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