US ELECTION 2024

This is how every vote is counted: The process behind the 2024 presidential election

Election Day is getting closer. With little over 48 hours before US polling stations open, let’s take a closer look at the voting process.

Brian Snyder

Luis Guillermo Vázquez Andy Hall

Estados Unidos Update: Nov 5th, 2024 11:15 EST

Tuesday’s US presidential elections will have a great impact worldwide. Donald Trump wants to return to power after losing in 2020, while Kamala Harris wants to become the first female president of the United States in history.

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Follow AS’s live coverage of Election Day and the count in swing states

In the US presidential election, the popular vote is simply an aggregate of all voters from all of the states nationwide. The candidate who gets the most votes nationwide is said to have won the popular vote.

Long lines in Boston on last day of early, in person voting. More than 1.6 million people have already cast ballots in Massachusetts. @KristinaRex https://t.co/zRxBbJWPvY
— WBZ | CBS News Boston (@wbz) November 1, 2024

Popular vote versus the Electoral vote

Unlike other countries where the popular vote ends up defining the president, in the United States the voting process is different, it does not depend entirely on the popular vote. In other words, it’s possible to win the popular vote and still lose the election. So let’s explain in detail the process behind them.

A group of electors selects the winner after taking into account the votes of the citizens. This is known as the ‘Electoral College’. It is a process that includes the selection of electors, the meeting of the electors who vote for the president and vice president, and the counting of the electors’ votes.

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There are 538 electors in total. Each state has the same number of electors as it has members of Congress (one for each member of the House of Representatives and two senators). To win the election, a majority of more than 270 electoral votes (just over 50%) is required.

The number of electors in each state depends on the number of inhabitants: That is, California has the most electors with a total of 55, followed by Texas with 38, and Florida and New York with 29. Whoever wins the popular vote in each state takes all the electoral votes.

As 76 million Americans have already voted early, CBS News election law contributor David Becker (@beckerdavidj) says this helps make the U.S. more "resilient" against voting disinformation focused on Election Day.

"The more people who vote early, they've effectively inoculated… pic.twitter.com/B0AJA1yf5T
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) November 3, 2024

Electoral votes

State	Electoral votes
Alabama	9
Alaska	3
Arizona	11
Arkansas	6
California	54
Colorado	10
Connecticut	7
Delaware	3
District of Columbia	3
Florida	30
Georgia	16
Hawaii	4
Idaho	4
Illinois	19
Indiana	11
Iowa	6
Kansas	6
Kentucky	8
Louisiana	8
Maine	4
Maryland	10
Massachusetts	11
Michigan	15
Minnesota	10
Mississippi	6
Missouri	10
Mountain	4
Nebraska	5
Snowfall	6
New Hampshire	4
New Jersey	14
New Mexico	5
New York	28
North Carolina	16
North Dakota	3
Ohio	17
Oklahoma	7
Oregon	8
Pennsylvania	19
Rhode Island	4
South Carolina	9
South Dakota	3
Tennessee	11
Texas	40
Utah	6
Vermont	3
Virginia	13
Washington	12
West Virginia	4
Wisconsin	10
Wyoming	3

What is a faithless elector?

Then, just to complicate matters, we also have what are know as faithless electors. A faithless elector is generally a party representative who does not have faith in the election result within their region and instead, votes for another candidate, or abstains.

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The number of faithless electors in each election is general quite low - there were 10 in 2016 and there were none at all in 2020.

To differentiate votes, each party has its own color. Thus, the color blue is used to refer to the Democrats, while red refers to the Republican Party.