Trump or Biden ?: A Guide to Understanding US Election Day

Two cardboard images of the US presidential candidates during a college football game in Kentucky.Rick Bowmer / AP

The United States has been hearing from both sides for weeks:

.

The four years of

presidency

and his incendiary character have left an extremely polarized country, to the point that these elections are interpreted as a referendum on his mandate.

After a long electoral cycle, which included the Democratic Party primaries from which

came out

as a candidate and a

that has left more than 230,000 Americans dead, this Tuesday the electoral process ends in the who will be the occupant of the White House in the next four years will be decided.

🇺🇸🗳️ Here is a guide with eight keys to follow the election day:

1. The candidates

President Donald Trump

(74 years old).

The Republican candidate who seeks to revalidate his term to stay four more years in the White House, does not need many presentations.

No one took this

star

, the son of a millionaire New York promoter, very seriously when he launched his candidacy attacking Mexicans in June 2015. But he managed to rise to power by appealing to the dissatisfaction of the working class and with a speech against immigration and globalism.

In the profile

, Amanda Mars reviews her four years of presidency filled with chaos, denial, corruption and an obsession with the spotlight.

Unlike the president, who had his successful launch into politics only five years ago,

(77), has been in Washington for almost half a century.

His life has been marked by personal tragedies that have forged an empathetic and dialoguing character that his followers defend as one of his main attributes.

Amanda Mars profiles

to the former vice president of Barack Obama, a moderate in a party immersed in a turn to the left.

2. The system

In 2016, more Americans marked Hillary Clinton's name on their ballots than Donald Trump.

The Democrat had almost three million more votes, but the Republican came to the White House because he won the electoral vote.

This is because, in the United States, the election is indirect and to reach the presidency of the United States,

.

This infographic by Artur Galocha and Patricia R. Blanco

It explains how the electoral college system works and how the president is elected.

3. The pendulum states

Each US state has a number of electoral votes (California, with 55, and Texas, with 38, have the most weight).

But those are not necessarily the territories to which campaigns dedicate the most resources and energy.

In the final stretch of the race for the White House, the candidates turn to the so-called pendulum or hinge states, which have neither Democrats nor Republicans insured and anyone can win.

This year we are looking especially at:

🏭

In 2016, Clinton had a puncture in a handful of counties in the US industrial belt that cost her dearly and tipped the balance toward Donald Trump with margins that were less than 1 percent.

🌴

is the most coveted pendulum state for the 29 electoral votes it contributes to the electoral balance.

In 2016, Trump beat Clinton by 1% of the vote (113,000 ballots) and this year the two campaigns are betting on winning over their diverse population.

🏜️ In

(11 electoral votes), the rejection of Trump has put the state within the reach of the Democrats.

🌽 With only six electoral votes,

is another state that tends to vary between parties.

There Obama won in 2008 and 2012, but Trump snatched it from the Democrats.

🧭

(18 electoral votes) has been a kind of electoral compass for the country for years.

Since 1964, whoever prevails in that State does so in the United States as a whole.

✊🏿✊🏾 The African-American electorate, overwhelmingly Democratic and mobilized after a summer of racial protests, can change the political sign of the States of

, with its 15 electoral votes,

and in recent weeks there is even talk of

,

with 16.

⭐

?

The high turnout in this electoral cycle has made the Democrats dream of winning in this state, a traditional Republican fiefdom, but whose hegemony was threatened in the 2018 legislative elections.

4. Key voters

The United States is the paradise of electoral polls.

There are such detailed reports of current and historical voting preferences and trends that every four years all sorts of analyzes emerge on which groups of voters can define an election.

This year those who can tip the balance towards Donald Trump or Joe Biden are

, as explained in

5. The advance vote

This Tuesday is the official voting day in the United States, which ends an electoral cycle, but for weeks we have seen long lines of voters throughout the country who have voted in advance,

.

In elections held in the middle of a pandemic, more than 98 million citizens have already deposited their ballots in person or by mail, a figure that represents

, in the absence of all those who did so. They will do this November 3.

6. What is at stake

In an election considered a referendum for the presidency of Donald Trump,

in which the Republican has given a turn to the multilateral tradition of the United States and has consolidated inequality in the first economy which, after a first few years of bonanza, suffered a stagnation and then the worst fall in decades due to the pandemic.

In this article, four correspondents from EL PAÍS analyze their immigration, economy, environment and international relations policies.

7. Surveys

According to the polls published so far,

and has a

greater

advantage over the Republican

than Hillary Clinton had in 2016. But this does not mean that the president cannot win: he

.

In

, Llaneras and our data expert Jorge Galindo pose six possible scenarios depending on who wins in the key states.

8. What time do you vote on Tuesday?

The first polling stations in the

local time (between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. Mexico time and between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. Spanish time) and

The opening and closing hours of polls in the 50 states and the District of Columbia are staggered because they are spread over six different time slots and some polling places will be open until 9:00 p.m. local time.

The last territories to close will be Alaska and Hawaii (at 0000 Eastern Time).

9. When does the count start?

The count begins when the polls close and the first results will not be long in being known.

However, each State has a counting system and how long it takes to do it will depend on it.

On election night we will be very aware of

(at 7:00 p.m. local time), because the electoral authorities are used to dealing with voting by mail and they can start processing it before the official voting day.

However, there are

10. When will we have final results?

In a year with record early turnout, both in person and by mail, the final results

, especially if there is a narrow margin in the difference in votes obtained by both candidates.

Four years ago,

ET, an hour after television networks and news agencies deemed her the loser as preliminary results from the states were released.

The count this year is likely to be further lengthened by the increased vote.

But nobody knows how much more.

The US media has warned that they plan to be more cautious when screening the winners because the first results may not provide a complete picture of the situation.

who tend to vote more early, while Republicans tend to vote more on official election day,

But it is not ruled out that Americans go to sleep on November 3

and, as

, uncertainty is explosive material in a country so tense and with a president who is whipping, without any basis , the ghost of fraud.

Subscribe here to the

about the elections in the United States