The voting for the 60th United States presidential election has officially begun. On November 5th at 13:00 Beijing time, voters in two small towns in New Hampshire, USA, began voting first, marking the official start of the US presidential election voting. Subsequently, starting from 19:00 on the same day, most state polling stations in the United States began to open one after another.
The current US presidential candidates are Democratic candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris, and Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump. According to the final pre election poll results released by NBC on November 3, Trump and Harris have tied support rates at 49% each, with only 2% of voters stating that they have not yet decided who to vote for.
From the current situation, the votes in Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada will be the key factors affecting the final election results. From the timeline, the election results of these seven states will be announced gradually from 9:00 am Beijing time on November 6th to the afternoon of the same day.
The US presidential election adopts the "Electoral College" and "winner takes all" system. The Electoral College system refers to the process where voters not only choose presidential candidates, but also select electors from each state to form an electoral college. The election result is determined by the electoral votes, not the general votes.
The winner takes all means that the candidate who receives the majority of votes in a state will receive all the electoral votes in that state. For example, if a candidate obtains a majority of votes in California, all 54 electoral votes in California will belong to that candidate. Under this system, even if a candidate receives a large number of votes from voters, they may not necessarily become the ultimate winner. In fact, it is highly likely that a minority of these seven swing states will ultimately influence the election results.