The countdown has begun. There are still nine days until the US presidential election, one of the most important in the country's history.

Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is running against former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump. Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, while Trump is choosing JD Vance, who has served as a U.S. senator from Ohio since 2023.

November 5th is the big election day, but some states allow early voting. According to reports, over 41 million votes have been cast so far Time, citing data from the University of Florida's Election Lab, which officially tracks early voting. More than 2.7 million voters in the key state of Georgia have now cast their votes early.

The choice can be a numbers mumbo-jumbo. Here are some important points to pay attention to.

Two

The presidential race typically consists of two candidates from the major parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. This time the race is between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, who are fighting for votes.

But these are not the only candidates. This time, many independents also ran for office and received impressive votes.

Five

November 5th. Election Day in the USA traditionally takes place on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Seven

There are seven swing states, i.e. those that do not clearly favor one party over the other and are therefore up for debate.

Harris and Trump are courting voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, concentrating their campaign efforts there to ensure victory. In a close election, just a handful of votes in one of these states could decide the outcome.

34 and 435

On Election Day, voters will not only decide who will occupy the White House, but also who will elect a new US Congress. 34 seats in the Senate and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs.

In the House of Representatives, members serve two-year terms. Republicans currently have the majority and Harris' Democrats are hoping for a turnaround.

In the Senate, 34 of 100 seats are available for a six-year term. Republicans hope to overthrow the slim Democratic majority.

538

Welcome to the Electoral College, the indirect system of universal suffrage that governs presidential elections in the United States. Each state has a different number of electors, calculated by adding the number of their elected representatives in the House of Representatives, which varies by population, to the number of senators (two per state).

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Rural Vermont, for example, only has three electoral votes. The vast California now has 54. In total there are 538 voters spread across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. To enter the White House, a candidate must win 270 votes.

774,000

The number of poll workers who volunteered to help ensure the 2020 election ran smoothly, according to the Pew Research Center. There are three types of poll workers in the United States. The majority are election workers who are responsible for things like greeting voters, providing language assistance, setting up voting equipment, and checking voter IDs and registrations.

According to Pew, election officials are elected, hired or appointed to perform more specialized duties such as training poll workers. Election observers are typically appointed by political parties to watch the counting of ballots – which is expected to be particularly contentious this year as Trump refuses to accept the result unconditionally.

Many election workers have already spoken to them AFP about the pressure and threats they are facing in the run-up to the vote on November 5th.

270 million and 78 million

Harris' team spent $270 million on her campaign in September, while Trump's team spent much less, just $78 million, official filings show. Accordingly The New York TimesHarris' campaign set a record for the largest fundraising quarter ever this fall, raising $1 billion since entering the race following Joe Biden's withdrawal in July.

244 million

The number of Americans who will be eligible to vote in 2024, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. Of course, how many of them will actually cast their vote remains to be seen. However, the Pew Research Center says the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential election produced three of the highest turnouts of their kind in the United States in decades.

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“Approximately two-thirds (66 percent) of the eligible voter population voted in the 2020 presidential election, the highest rate of any national election since 1900,” Pew’s website says. According to the Census Bureau, that represented nearly 155 million voters.

41 million

More than 41 million Americans had voted early as of Oct. 27, according to a University of Florida database. Most US states allow in-person or absentee voting to help people deal with scheduling conflicts or the inability to cast a vote on Election Day itself, November 5th.

With contributions from AFP

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