The Electoral College process, enshrined in the US Constitution as a compromise between direct popular election and congressional selection of the president, allocates electoral votes to each state based on their congressional representation.

Trump secured victory in the Nov. 6 election with 312 electoral votes, well above the 270 needed to win. After electors meet in their respective state capitals on Dec. 17, Congress will conduct the official count during a joint session on Jan. 6, 2025, leading to Trump being declared as "president-elect" by Senate President Kamala Harris – who was also his chief opponent as the Democratic presidential nominee. Then, on Jan. 20, he will take the oath of office at his second inauguration.

Trump's commanding victory in Florida, where he captured 56% of the vote compared to his narrower 49.9% national margin, will be formalized when the state's electors convene in the Senate chambers at the state Capitol. The 30 Republican electors, whose names were submitted by the state party in August, include several high-profile officials, including one already tapped for Trump's future cabinet – former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has been nominated for US attorney general.

Former state Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who received Trump's endorsement to fill Sen. Marco Rubio's Senate seat, is also among the electors, alongside Florida Senate President Ben Albritton, Attorney General Ashley Moody, House Speaker Daniel Pérez and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson.

Florida law requires electors to be registered state voters and members of their respective parties who have sworn in writing to support their party's nominees. An elector's refusal to vote for their party's candidates is considered an automatic resignation under state statute.

The process faced a legal challenge in Wisconsin over scheduling, but a federal judge affirmed the Dec. 17 meeting date, aligning with federal law despite state statutes initially suggesting an earlier date.

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According to a forecast model published by the polling website 538, President Joe Biden currently stands as the slight favorite to secure victory against his Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. The simulation, which explores potential outcomes based on various factors such as adjusted polling averages, economic indicators, and demographic data, indicates that Biden would prevail in 53 out of 100 simulated scenarios, while Trump would emerge victorious in the remaining 47.

With less than five months until the pivotal election day, the race appears to be a neck-and-neck contest between Biden and Trump. As G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist for 538, noted, "The range of realistic Electoral College outcomes generated by our forecasting model stretches from 132 to 445 electoral votes for Biden – a testament to how much things could change by November (and how off the polls could be)."

While the forecast acknowledges Trump's current lead over Biden in several polls, including those conducted in crucial swing states, it also factors in additional "fundamentals" such as changes in economic conditions and other political indicators that may favor the incumbent president. Historically, incumbent presidents have tended to perform better in reelection bids.

Varad Mehta, a historian and writer, commented on the divergence between the 538 forecast and another prediction model, stating, "For the opposite view of the state of the presidential race, DDHQ has Trump as the slight favorite. The difference? 538 has Biden winning all three blue wall states, and DDHQ has Trump winning Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Which is what the polls show right now."

This seems fair. https://t.co/RpnD8JRsXr

— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) June 13, 2024

 Lawyer James Debate expressed a balanced view on the 538 forecast, acknowledging its apparent accuracy while raising concerns about the potential overestimation of third-party candidates' performance. "Biden narrowly favored to win Presidential election according to 538's new forecast," he wrote. "I've been dunking a lot on 538 this cycle, but this is a surprisingly solid forecast and seems about right for the current polling."

As the election approaches, the 538 forecast is set to be updated daily to reflect the latest data and shifts in the political landscape.

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For the first time in almost 30 years, the US is facing the possibility of electing a new president after the previous one served only a single term, after Democratic Joe Biden moved closer to the golden 270 electoral votes when the count ended in a few key states where the election still hasn't been decided.

Although officially, everything is still open because while Donald Trump's campaign will be asking for a recount and trying to verify claims of mass fraud, and possibly even involved the courts, which would drag the final decision out until December, practically speaking, it looks like the big US networks like CNN and Fox News will be declaring a winner of the race, and chances are that Joe Biden will reach the necessary 270 electoral votes and be declared the next president of the United States.

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As of Wednesday evening, when vote counting ended in the Midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin, the networks were announcing that these two states would be awarding their electoral votes to Joe Biden, which means he stands at 264 votes. On Thursday, counting was due to resume in Nevada, which gives six electoral votes to its winner. If Biden wins in the Silver State, as most pundits think he will given the state's years-long trend toward blue, he will make it to exactly the number of votes he needs to become president – 270 out of the 538 electors.

Other than Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania were left without a declared winner (as did Alaska, although not because of a close race, but because there isn't enough data, and it will certainly go to Trump). In other words, even if Biden doesn't win Nevada because of some delay in the counting process or because of legal appeals or other delays, he could get to 270 by winning any of the three other states – Pennsylvania, Georgia, or North Carolina. Right now, people think that he will come out on top when all the votes are counted in Georgia and Pennsylvania, once all the mail-in ballots arrive and are counted.

In theory, Trump could still get to 270 (right now he has 214), but to do that, he must win all the states where the race is still close: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and North Carolina. It's hard to see a scenario in which he wins without intervention from the courts or a recount that would reveal massive fraud or widespread problems.

In political terms, it looks as if both sides are preparing for a war for public opinion. While Biden intends to market himself as the elected president starting in the next few days, to create momentum, and possibly even announce policy moves and appointments when he is sworn in in January, Trump's approach will be to use all the weight he has as president to create a narrative of the election having been "stolen" through widespread mail-in voting by Democrats, which he says is a method full of flaws because voting cannot be supervised from a distance.

Legally speaking, it seems that Trump is already taking steps to secure a recount, and also wants the courts to step in to prevent many ballots that are still in the mail from being counted, under the claim that there is no way of knowing when they were actually filled out. America is entering a "post-election" campaign that will be no less base and difficult than the actual campaign, but no matter the results, states will decide by the start of December to whom they will award their electoral votes, and on Dec. 14 they will vote in the new president. On Jan. 6, 2021, after Congress counts the electors, the president-elect will be formally declared, and he will swear allegiance to the US Constitution two weeks after that.

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