Americans will head to the polls in November to elect the next US president. The vote will be closely watched around the world.
They will also be voting for members of Congress, who play a key part in passing laws that can have a profound effect on American life.
When is the next US presidential election?
The 2024 election will be on Tuesday, 5 November 2024. The winner will serve a term of four years in the White House, starting in January 2025.
The president has the power to pass some laws on their own but mostly they must work with Congress to pass legislation.
On the world stage, the US leader has considerable freedom to represent the country abroad and to conduct foreign policy.
Who are the candidates and how are they nominated?
The two main parties nominate a presidential candidate by holding a series of votes called state primaries and caucuses, where people choose who they want to lead the party in a general election.
In the Republican Party, former President Donald Trump won his party’s support with a massive lead over his rivals. He became the official Republican nominee at a party convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
For the Democrats, Vice-President Kamala Harris is closing in on the nomination. She joined the race after President Joe Biden dropped out.
Ms Harris appears to have unassailable support within her party and could be crowned at its convention in August, in Chicago.
There are also some independent candidates running for president, including Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew to former president John F Kennedy.
What do the Democrats and Republicans stand for?
The Democrats are the liberal political party, with an agenda defined largely by its push for civil rights, a broad social safety net and measures to address climate change.
The Republicans are the conservative political party in the US. Also known as the GOP, or the Grand Old Party, it has stood for lower taxes, shrinking the size of the government, gun rights and tighter restrictions on immigration and abortion.
How does the US presidential election work?
The winner is not the person who gets the most votes across the country.
Instead, both candidates compete to win contests held across the 50 states.
Each state has a certain number of so-called electoral college votes partly based on population. There are a total of 538 up for grabs, and the winner is the candidate that wins 270 or more.
All but two states have a winner-takes-all rule, so whichever candidate wins the highest number of votes is awarded all of the state’s electoral college votes.
Most states lean heavily towards one party or the other, so the focus is usually on a dozen or so states where either of them could win. These are known as the battleground or swing states.
It is possible for a candidate to win the most votes nationally – like Hillary Clinton did in 2016 – but still be defeated by the electoral college.
