A presidential race is a competitive contest between candidates to become the next President of the United States. People who share similar ideas about how government should work form political parties. The two major political parties in the US are the Democrats and Republicans. The people who belong to a party choose their party’s candidate in primary and caucus elections. The person who wins the most votes becomes the presidential nominee of that party. The party’s national convention later decides who will be the president of the United States.
The electoral process for the presidency is complicated by the fact that a candidate must win more than half of the electoral votes to be elected president. There are 538 electoral votes. Each state, the District of Columbia and some US territories are allocated electoral votes based on their population size. A state with the largest population will get more electors than a small state with the same population. The number of electoral votes a candidate receives is calculated after all states have voted.
Polls conducted in the weeks leading up to election day show that Trump and Harris are neck and neck nationally and in key swing states. When vote counting began in December, however, it became clear that Trump had won enough electoral votes to become president.
During the debates, candidates from both parties are asked questions about their policies and positions on various issues. Each candidate has 2 minutes to answer a question and can make rebuttal remarks for up to 1 minute. The moderator of the debate sets the timing for each segment and uses colored lights resembling traffic signals to inform candidates of how much time they have left to answer a question: green indicates 30 seconds, yellow indicates 15 and red means only 5 seconds remain.