USA. Citizens of the United States decide between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, but their vote is not counted as in France. The electoral process of the presidential election is more complex.
Who will win the 2024 US presidential election, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? If our major live broadcast dedicated to the election makes it possible to follow the evolution of the results, we also need to know how the votes designate, at the end of the count, the winner of the presidential election.
And to fully understand the presidential election in the United States, it is important to keep in mind how it works. And it must be said that it remains very far from what we are used to in France. First of all, this is not an election by direct universal suffrage, but indirect. American voters do not vote directly for candidates, in this case Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, but for electors, who themselves form an electoral college which votes to designate the winner. These electors are designated in advance by the parties, Republican and Democratic, and each state has a number fixed in advance of electors, depending on the number of inhabitants residing there. The smallest states have a minimum of 3 electors and the most populous state in the country, California, designates 55 electors during these elections.
The other great singularity of the American presidential elections is that they radically set aside the proportionality of votes. Because – except in Nebraska and Maine – in each state, all votes are given to the candidate who comes first, whatever the result. It is therefore enough, for example, to muster just one more vote than your opponent in the state of California to ensure the full support of its 55 voters. This is called the “winner-takes-all” system.
The electoral system based on the designation of electors and on “winner-takes-all” in fact creates large disparities between the number of votes obtained by a candidate from citizens and the number of votes obtained from major voters. It is possible that a president is elected with fewer citizen votes than his opponent, this was notably the case in 2000 during the election of George Bush junior or in 2016 during the election of Donald Trump.
To be a candidate for the American presidential election, you must be at least 35 years old, be an American citizen by birth and have lived on United States soil for at least 14 years. You must then officially receive the nomination of one of the two parties that structure American political life, that is to say compete in the Democratic or Republican primaries.
To do this, votes are organized in each of the states at the start of the presidential election year. Voting begins in the states of Iowa and New Hampshire. “Delegates” are then designated for each party who represent a candidate and who will officially vote for the woman or man to be nominated during the national conventions. But since we know in advance the number of delegates won for each candidate’s cause, the names of those nominated are generally known in March, well before the conventions.
As in France, candidates’ campaigns benefit from public and private aid. On the other hand, campaign spending is not capped and breaks records from year to year.
Public aid
Public aid exists in the United States to finance an electoral campaign, but it only represents a quarter of candidates’ expenses on average. They are assigned by the Federal Election Commission. This fund is financed by a “voluntary tax”. Public funds in fact commit candidates to respect a ceiling, and therefore encourage them to do without private funds once the party’s nomination has been obtained.
Private funds
The “527 Associations”. These are groups, associations or political committees, generally created to promote the candidacy of a personality for a position, but the objectives and vocations of these associations are multiplying. These “527” are authorized to receive donations directly from companies, and can themselves make their financial contribution to candidates or parties, without ceiling.
The Political Action Committee (PAC). It is through these organizations that natural or legal persons who wish to participate directly in the financing of a campaign are obliged to go through. A constraint that dates from 2002. Before, companies, pressure groups or unions could make direct contributions to candidates and their parties. Today, most PACs represent businesses, unions or advocacy groups.
Capped donations, unlimited budgets
In recent years, the sums collected by candidates in the American presidential election have soared at the same time as spending: 162 million dollars in 1980, 324 million in 1988, 529 million dollars in 2000, 1.553 billion in 2008 , according to figures from the Federal Election Commission, 2.6 billion in 2012, more than 3 billion in 2016, 10 billion dollars in 2020 and 16 billion dollars for this 2024 presidential election.
However, on an individual basis, donations are, as in France, capped: in 2014, the Supreme Court uncapped individual donations, the limit increasing to $3.5 million every two years. It then remains for the candidates to multiply the structures to reach the astronomical sums mentioned above.
The United States has developed over the course of its history a very specific and quite complex mechanism for electing its president. Initially, each state organizes the nomination of the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate who have its confidence. For this, there are two possibilities, either a caucus or primaries, which concretely make it possible to elect national delegates (who campaign for a Republican candidate or a Democratic candidate), who themselves elect the official candidate of the party during of a national convention.
Primaries and caucuses are conducted independently by Democrats and Republicans. Under this process, which is not at all in the US Constitution, two candidates are chosen to face each other in November. You should also know that every American citizen registers on the electoral roll as a Democrat or Republican.
American primaries: what are they?
This is a classic election, which takes place throughout the day: citizens go to a polling station, choose a ballot for a candidate (even if it actually designates the delegates who vote for it). represent).
Closed primaries (default) : Only citizens registered on the electoral roll as Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary. Conversely, only citizens of Republican persuasion can vote in the Republican primary.
Open primaries : A Republican voter can vote in the Democratic primary and vice versa. On the other hand, he cannot vote a second time for the Democratic primary (and vice versa).
American caucuses, what are they?
During a caucus day, hundreds of neighborhood meetings, organized by the parties, are held in a state. Again, the goal is to designate delegates who will represent a candidate at the party’s national convention, but not by going to a voting booth. In a caucus, we discuss, we debate, we argue, for almost two hours. Once the merits of the different candidates have been clearly presented to all, the assemblies vote by show of hands for local delegates, who are responsible for electing the national delegates during the county conventions.
The method of designation is spread over time, over several months, according to a schedule fixed in advance. This allows candidates to continue campaigning for weeks and speak more directly to voters in each state. But this also introduces a real inequality of treatment between citizens since we generally know the name of the winners halfway through: in the States which vote last, the votes therefore have less importance than those of the voters of the States voting first.