The presidential election on November 5 is likely to be the closest race since at least 2000.

According to the latest polls, Kamala Harris is currently slightly ahead of Donald Trump.

But the US elections are not just about who gets the most votes overall, but also about who wins in the right states.

How does the US election work?I

If you add up the votes in the “safe” states that the candidates probably don’t have to worry about so much, Harris is at 225 Votes in the Electoral College and Trump with 219, in their race for 270.

Of the 94 votes remaining in the eight crucial swing states where the race is neck and neck, Harris needs 45 to win the presidency and Trump needs 51.

Harris is currently ahead on most of these issues.

Read the analysis and follow the reactions to the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in our live blog

But the margins are narrow. Trump would only have to turn things around in two of the larger states to reach the 51 points he needs to win.

After the debate on September 10, Kamala Harris regained the lead in the betting markets, but only by a very narrow margin, reflecting bettors’ belief that the race is far from over.

Predict who you think will win in each swing state and we’ll tell you who will become president if you’re right.

Swing states

In many states, we can already be fairly certain of the outcome. California and New York, for example, have voted Democrat in every election for the past 30 years.

In Texas, the situation is reversed: no one there has voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976, almost 50 years ago. In 2020, only five states changed hands.

That is why the eight states in which the decision could move in one direction or the other are so important.

If Trump does not win Pennsylvania, his path to victory will become increasingly narrow – he would have to win at least four of the six largest remaining states.

However, if he wins there, he could become president together with only two others.

There are no recent polls in Nebraska’s 2nd district from pollsters recognized by our US partner NBC News, but this single vote could make all the difference if other states move in a certain direction.

If Trump wins Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan and loses North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, he would be stuck in the 269th district – Nebraska 2nd would get him across the finish line.

What happens if there is a tie in the Electoral College?I

How does the US election work?

In each of the fifty states and in Washington DC, the president is elected independently of the others.

Each state is worth a certain number of “electoral votes” – or points – based on the state’s population.

California, the most populous U.S. state, has 54 electoral votes representing its 39 million residents.

Wyoming, the smallest U.S. state, has three electoral votes to represent its 600,000 residents.

There are 538 “points” in total. To become president, a candidate must score 270 (more than half). It doesn’t matter what combination of states gets him there, but some paths are easier than others.

In most states—all except Nebraska and Maine—the winning candidate in a state receives all available electoral votes.

So if Donald Trump were to win Florida by a single vote, he would receive all 30 electoral college votes, as if he had received 100 percent of the votes cast there.

In Nebraska, the candidate who wins the state overall gets two votes, and the candidate who wins three Nebraska districts gets one vote each, for a total of five. It’s the same in Maine, but there are only four electoral college votes available, so the remaining votes are split between two districts instead of three.

Who is the bookmakers’ favorite?

So far we’ve talked mostly about the polls, but there’s another, often overlooked way to gauge the likely outcome of the election: by looking at what people are spending their money on.

Betting markets, unlike polls, are determined by people who are willing to back their predictions with real money. This means they reflect not only today’s opinions, but also the collective wisdom of people who care about the outcome and how things might change in the future.

Sky News is tracking the odds of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump winning the 2024 election. We have converted the odds into percentages to reflect the implied probability of each candidate winning.

The percentage refers to the candidate’s overall chance of winning, no matter by what margin, rather than an implied vote share or Electoral College split.

Who is the audience favorite?

Sometimes it’s not about politics, it’s just about whether you like one candidate better than another.

Americans tend to be more unfriendly than positive toward Donald Trump, but his popularity has increased (relatively) recently.

For Harris, the situation is currently the other way around: After she was named the official candidate, she experienced a brief upswing, but has since fallen to levels close to Trump’s new high.

As the election approaches, keep an eye on all of these trackers to see how the polls and betting market forecasts are developing and what they reveal about the outcome of the presidential race.

The Data and Forensics The team is a diverse unit dedicated to Sky News’ transparent journalism. We collect, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite imagery, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling, we aim to better explain the world while showing how our journalism works.