On Tuesday, November 5th, Americans will vote in one of the most astonishing and horrifying electoral campaigns in history. President Joe Biden has withdrawn from the race and been replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris, while Republican candidate Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt and is embroiled in multiple criminal cases.
The consequences in the world’s largest economy will have far-reaching implications for the climate crisis, abortion, and development both within the United States and globally.
Here are the terms you need to know:
voting measure
Voters in November will not only have to choose between Democratic candidates (Kamala Harris and Tim Walz) and Republican candidates (Donald Trump and J.D. Vance). U.S. ballots can also include ballot measures such as statewide laws, issues, and questions.
This year, voters in 10 U.S. states could be asked to vote on abortion laws or anti-abortion policies. Missouri, Florida, Nebraska, Montana, Arizona, Nevada, Maryland, New York, South Dakota, and Colorado.
The 2024 US election campaign is between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris. Overall: Reuters
vote against
According to the American Voting Foundation, non-voting ballot measures in the U.S. presidential election are negative voting measures, and more than one-third of the roughly half of Americans who regularly vote do not fill out their entire ballot. . . Voters do not need to vote on the downvoted measure for their ballots to be counted.
electoral collegeThe Electoral College is a group of 538 people called electors who officially vote for the president of the United States after the people vote. This is a requirement outlined in the U.S. Constitution. Electors are selected by political parties in each of the 50 US states prior to the election.
The number of electoral votes varies by state and is determined based on the census. The number of votes is equal to the total number of congressional delegations, that is, the number of senators plus the number of representatives. Although not a state, the District of Columbia, like Washington, D.C., is allocated three electoral votes.
That's why there are 100 senators, 435 representatives, and 3 for DC, for a total of 538 members.
A candidate needs more than half of the Electoral College votes, or at least 270 votes, to win. In most states, all electoral votes in the state go to the same candidate. The exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, where the state’s popular vote winner receives two electoral votes, and then each congressional district’s popular vote winner receives one electoral vote.
A party that wins a state invites electors to formally vote for its candidate. This takes place on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, several weeks after the November election and after each U.S. state has certified its election results.
In 2020, Donald Trump tried to remove electors from some states before the electoral votes were cast, but the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that effort the week before.
Popularity vote
The popular vote is the total number of voters who voted for a particular candidate, that is, the number of votes cast for one candidate or another. The main thing to know about the popular vote is that winning the popular vote does not mean you become president. The presidential position is won by the candidate who receives a majority of the electoral votes. In other words, U.S. elections are determined by race in each state. In the 2016 election, Donald Trump received fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, but still won the presidency, and in 2000, George W. Bush also received fewer votes than Al Gore, but also won. .
Solicitation and authentication
Canvassing is the process of counting ballots and tabulating the results. This includes checks to ensure the results are valid, including ensuring that all ballots are considered and repeatedly verifying the results.
Canvas provision ends with authentication, where the Canvas process is approved. In short, it is the official confirmation of the results.
County election officials certify the canvass by signing a declaration that the results reported by the precinct are a complete and accurate record of all votes cast.
Certification is mandatory and codified in law, so authorities cannot refuse to certify results, although some do. The certification process “has long been seen as an administrative afterthought,” according to the Associated Press, and there are fears it will happen again in November.
Red state, blue state, swing state
Red states tend to vote Republican, blue states tend to vote Democratic, and swing states are states that swing between the two major parties every election.
Swing states, or battleground states, are the areas where the most votes are needed to win support from voters who are still undecided or who are hoping to be persuaded to switch from supporting the opposing team to supporting their own team. This is where they tend to invest their money.
Voters in seven battleground states are likely to decide this year’s election. The states and number of electors at issue are Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Nevada (6), North Carolina (16), Pennsylvania (19), and Wisconsin ( 10). . Together they account for 93 electoral votes, more than a third of the votes a candidate needs to win.
Swing states are less commonly referred to as “toss-up” states or “purple” states. The latter refers to a mixture of blue and red.
blue wall, red wall
Voters gather at a polling place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 3, 2020. Pennsylvania is a battleground state in the Midwest Rust Belt. Photo: Bloomberg/Getty Images
The blue wall refers to the 18 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, where Washington, D.C., voted Democratic from 1992 to 2012.
In 2016, Trump won three blue wall states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The term red wall is less common, but it once referred to states from South Carolina to Idaho. In 2020, Time magazine called it “like pink curtains or a pink pond” because it was starting to fall apart.
rusty belt
The Rust Belt is a collection of states in the Northeast and Midwest where industries such as manufacturing and coal mining have declined or been “left to rust.” It’s not a geographic region, it’s an economic region. Michigan, home to Detroit, once the center of the U.S. auto industry, is one of them.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, it is generally thought to include most of the Midwest (Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin) and parts of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York. .
The Midwest Rust Belt is home to three swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which is why it matters in every election, including this one.
Winning these states, or winning enough electoral votes, is one path to victory for Kamala Harris, according to analysts who have modeled the path based on polls. Another path to victory for Harris and Democrats is the Sun Belt (more on this below). According to the model, Trump would need to win both groups of states to win the 270 electoral votes needed to secure victory.
sun belt
The Sunbelt includes 15 states that span the southern United States from the Southwest to the Southeast and have more sunny or milder weather than northern states.
This includes four battleground states: Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia. The remaining three swing states are in the Rust Belt.
bible belt, elevated states
The Bible Belt is the American South, with many Christians and conservatives, who tend to vote Republican. This includes Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and Oklahoma. The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma is known as the “buckle” of the Bible belt.
The Elevated States, or Elevated States, also known as Central America, are states in the center of the country between the east and west coasts of the United States, the most populous region of the country. One-third of Americans live in four states: California, Texas, Florida, and New York.
A voter fills out a ballot in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Photo: Nick Oxford/Reuters
Absentee or mail-in voting
These are ballots cast by mail or in person, depending on state regulations, before Election Day. President Trump has called for an end to mail-in voting. This is in part because many Americans voted by mail in the 2020 election due to the coronavirus pandemic, and more Democrats than Republicans chose this option. In the 20 states compiling party data, 7 million more Democrats voted early than Republicans.
provisional ballot
If a voter’s name is not on the voter registration list at their precinct’s polling place on election day, the voter may be given a provisional ballot, which will allow them to vote, but the It will be placed in a “secret envelope”. than the ballot box. The registration status of these voters is then determined. If you are registered, your vote will be counted.
In 2018, a voter named Crystal Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for voting provisionally in the 2016 election without knowing she was ineligible to vote. The incident was seen as part of a broader Republican effort to intimidate people from voting. Mason was acquitted in 2024.
voter suppression
Voter suppression tactics are laws, measures, or erroneous measures designed to prevent people of color and others, many of whom tend to vote Democratic, from voting or registering to vote, according to Pew research. It is about information.
Southern voting advocates told the Guardian in 2023 that they felt like they were playing whack-a-mole. While attempting to educate and register voters, efforts were also needed to defeat oppressive laws that imposed new rules on mail-in voting and restricted voting. Proof required.
The various tactics are too complex to explain here. But Georgia is a great example. In 2021, Georgia Republicans are pushing for sweeping voting restrictions, including a ban on providing food or water within 150 feet (45.7 meters) of a polling place or within 25 feet (7.6 meters) of a voter in line. The bill “SB202” was enacted. It can spread well beyond a 150 foot radius. Violating this is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine.
There were long lines to vote in Georgia, and many saw the bill as an obvious attempt to make it harder for black voters to vote. This law was darkly mocked in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
path to victory
Path to victory refers to how a candidate gets 270 Electoral College votes and wins the election, rather than, say, getting the most votes overall. This involves targeting specific states (battleground states and their electoral vote numbers) with time, money, and messaging. Candidates often focus on their chances in Rust Belt and Sun Belt states, including seven battleground states and their crucial electoral votes.
surrogate
A campaign agent is an individual who speaks publicly on behalf of a political candidate, usually to promote the candidate. Think Oprah, Obama, and Joe Biden for Harris, and Hulk Hogan and Nikki Haley for Trump.
october surprise
This term refers to news events that occur just before the election, in October. Elections are always held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which affects the outcome of the election. Examples include the Access Hollywood tapes and John Podesta’s emails from the 2016 election.
