Americans to vote in US Presidential Election
The US Presidential Election takes place today, with Donald Trump looking to win a second term.
He's up against Joe Biden, who served as Vice President under Barack Obama.
The American electoral system is complicated and at times messy, whereby the person who gets the most votes doesn't always necessarily win.
Hillary Clinton found this out the hard way, after winning the popular vote in 2016 but didn't do enough in certain states.
Electoral College
The Electoral College is the system used to decide the US Presidential Election.
Each state is allocated a certain number of 'Electoral College votes', which is decided by how many members of Congress represent each state.
So take California (55 electoral votes), they have 53 seats in the House of Representatives, as well as 2 Senators.
There are 538 total electoral votes, which means the first candidate to get past 270 wins the race to the White House.
States to watch
Some states are set to go to either Republicans (Trump) or Democrats (Biden) regardless of who is running.
For example, California and New York will go to the Democrats, while Kentucky and South Carolina will go to the Republicans.
This is due to various voting patterns as well as demographics in each state.
There are however a number of 'battleground states' which could go either way.
Trump won the election in 2016 by taking Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania from the Democrats by very narrow margins.
Thus, a number of states which come into this equation can be found below:
As you can see, there is a massive swing towards Joe Biden if polling averages are to be believed.
Even in states Trump won comfortably in 2016 (Iowa, Ohio, Texas) still have a big swing towards Biden, although Trump is still in the lead.
IF, and it's a big if, these polling averages hold then Biden will become the next President
Counting
Counting will get underway immediately after the polls close, which will vary depending on each state.
North Carolina and Florida's polls will close at around 1am Irish Time, and their counts tend to happen quicker.
Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania take much slower, however.
Florida will be the key state early on into the night. If Joe Biden can win here, then it will all but confirm his win.
However if Trump wins in Florida, then it could be a long night ahead of us.
