How do the US presidential elections work?
View(s):Every four years people in the US vote for who they want to be their president.
The president makes decisions about how the US is run and how it
will work with other countries.
He is in charge of the world’s biggest superpower.
Some people say that the American president is the most powerful person on Earth.
How is the president chosen?
First, both of the main political parties – Republicans and Democrats – have to pick one
candidate each who they want to run for president.
The parties choose their candidate by holding primaries or
caucuses in each American state, which are held between January until about June.
Primaries
In a primary election, the public vote for people called ‘delegates’ – who are supporting the particular person they want to run for
president.
Each state has a certain number of delegates depending on how many people live there. If a candidate wins a state they get all that state’s delegates.
‘Super Tuesday’ – held in February or March – is when many states vote in their primary elections.
Caucuses
Some states use a caucus – a local meeting system – instead of holding primaries.
What happens next?
The person from each party with the most delegates then becomes their candidate and runs for the job of president!
The presidential elections are always held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
On that day, Americans vote for people called ‘electors’ in their state who are supporting the candidate they want to be president – this process is called the electoral college.
The more people who live in a state, the more electors that state has. The candidate with the most electors wins all the state’s electoral college votes. And the first candidate to win enough states to claim 270 electoral votes becomes the president.
Can anyone become president?
The president of America can be a man or a woman of any race or any religion, but they must have:
• been born in the US
• be at least 35 years old
• have lived in the US for at least 14 years
It takes months, even years, of really hard work to be elected
president. Once you’ve become president, the rules state one
person can only be in the job for a maximum of eight years.
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