Timeline
A year or more before election day
Forming an Exploratory Committee
Before the campaign gets started, candidates will form an exploratory committee, to see whether a presidential run is viable. They will start to contact potential donors to their campaign and attempt to rally support amongst their colleagues. Many fail to do so and will never formally announce their campaigns for the presidency. During this period many candidates will take the opportunity to publish books to increase their name recognition – a book deal before an election year is a pretty good indicator that a candidate wants to run.
A year or more before election day
A year before election day
Announcing Intention to Run
Candidates announce their intention to run. Most candidates will announce their intention to run for president about a year before election day, usually between the September and December of the year before. At this point they will start to make the rounds on television and start building their campaign structure, collecting donors and putting out ads.
Primary Season January-June
Primaries
From January of election year each party will start running primaries – where voters for that party vote for which candidate they would most like to contest the presidential election. The first primary usually takes place in mid-January and the final states will usually have cast their ballots in June. Most primaries are decided by March however, as candidates are forced to drop out as they fail to gain enough support. Each state won will give candidates delegates who will then vote for them to be the presidential nominee for their party at the party convention at the end of primary season.
Primary Season January-June
National Party Conventions
Usually held in a bellwether states (states where their result tends to reflect the national result) that the party needs to win in the presidential election, party conventions see the candidate who won the primary formally selected as the party candidate. Delegates will also vote on the party platform and formally select the vice-presidential candidate – who is usually announced by the candidate in the weeks before the convention. It is an opportunity to project party unity and convention speeches from the most well-known party figures – senators, governors and former presidents – gives the opportunity to build momentum going into the election.
Election Season
Officially the campaign kicks off on Labor Day, although in reality the candidates won't stop campaigning from the start of the primary until the day after the election. Candidates will spend much of their time touring the country, going to campaign stops and meeting with the voters, particularly in the bellwether states that they need to win in order to claim the presidency. In 2016 the candidates did more than 100 rallies between them across the country.
Election Day
On the Tuesday after the second Monday in November (yes the founding fathers made it that specific) Americans will head to the polls across the country. They will vote for who they want as president as well as for Senators, Congressmen and many state and local positions.
Election Night
In the evening, many Americans will switch on their televisions and watch the results come in. Throughout the night each state will be declared for a particular candidate and at some point in the night the media will ‘call’ the election, when it looks overwhelmingly likely that one candidate will win. To win, the candidate will need to win at least 270 delegates in the Electoral College.
Electoral College
On the Monday after the second Wednesday in November (yes, that specific again) the Electoral College delegates will be asked to cast their ballots for the candidate who won in their states. This is when the president is officially elected. The delegates are not legally required to vote for the candidates their state chose, however, there have been few recorded cases in American history where these ‘faithless electors’ voted differently from their state and it has never changed the result.
Inauguration
According to the US Constitution, the term of each elected President of the United States begins at noon on January 20 of the year following the election. On this day, the President is inaugurated and must take the oath of office before assuming the duties of the position.
Primary Season
In the primary season, states hold two different types of elections to decide who is going to be given that state’s delegates for the party nomination: primaries and caucuses.
- There are different types of primaries, the most common being open and closed. Open primaries mean that any registered voter within a state can vote for a particular party’s nominee, whereas for closed primaries, only members of that party can vote
- Primaries work much the same way as many other elections, with the candidate who wins the most votes gaining the majority of that state’s delegates. Each state does it slightly differently, but most also give some delegates to all other candidates who receive above a certain percentage of the vote.
- Caucuses are more like a town meeting, where communities gather together to debate and vote on who they want to be the candidate. Some causes last for hours and people will vote with their feet, standing in groups of who they want the candidate to be. Some less popular candidates will be eliminated and their supporters asked to then choose a different group to stand with and a different candidate to select.
National Conventions
The major political parties in the United States are the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, who are the only parties to have won the presidency in the last 150 years.
In the summer leading up to the election, they hold their national conventions, usually placed within key states. The conventions are the ‘rubber stamp’ for parties in choosing their Presidential candidate.
The winner of the primary will be known in advance usually and the delegates from each state will be asked to cast their ballots, although it is the case that delegates may not always agree with their state and can result in a contested convention. Although rare, this means candidates are forced to try and get delegates votes on the convention floor in order to gain them the nomination. A similar process happens for choosing the party platform, with votes on policies which they should adopt.
The convention is headlined by some keynote speeches, usually by rising Senators or established party figures.
Electoral College
We mentioned the Electoral College a few times in the timeline - this is possibly the strangest part of the American Presidential election.
Voters do not actually vote for the President in a Presidential election, but they vote for a delegate who they wish to go to the Electoral College and cast a vote for their chosen candidate. Although in effect they are voting for the President as the delegates almost always carry out the decision of the voters, there have been a few cases of faithless electors (who are those who cast a ballot differently from how the voters instructed them).
The important things to remember about the Electoral College are:
- There are 538 electors, a candidate needs a majority of 270 to win.
- The Electoral College isn’t a physical building - most delegates go to their state Capitol building to cast their vote.
- Faithless electors are rare, but they do happen. There were 10 in 2016, which is one of the highest in history. From 1948 to 2012 there were only 9.
- If a candidate does not receive a majority in the Electoral College, the responsibility of choosing the President falls on the Senate, who will then elect the President. This happened in 1824, when Andrew Jackson won the most Electoral College delegates, but not a majority. The Senate then decided to pick second placed John Quincy Adams as President, as Andrew Jackson was disliked amongst the political elite.
