Washington:

Swing states, electoral college votes, candidates up and down the ballot and millions of potential voters: Here’s the US election, broken down by the numbers.

Two

Several independents ran — and at least one, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., stumbled on a series of eyebrow-raising headlines.

But ultimately, the presidential race comes down to a binary choice, with the two major-party candidates — Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump — seeking to lead a polarized America.

Five

November 5 — Election Day, traditionally held on the Tuesday following the first month in November.

Seven

The number of swing states — those that do not clearly favor one side over the other, meaning they are up for grabs.

Harris and Trump are courting voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, focusing their campaign efforts there in an effort to secure victory.

In a close election, just a handful of votes in any one of those states could decide the outcome.

34 and 435

Voters will not only decide the occupant of the White House on Election Day, but also the renewal of the US Congress.

Thirty-four seats in the Senate and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs.

In Parliament, members serve a two-year term. Republicans currently hold the majority, and Harris’ Democrats will be hoping for a turnaround.

In the Senate, 34 seats out of 100 are available for a six-year term. Republicans hope to overturn the narrow Democratic majority.

538

Welcome to the Electoral College, the indirect universal suffrage system that governs presidential elections in the United States.

Each state has a different number of electors — calculated by adding the number of their elected representatives in the House, which varies by population, to the number of senators (two per state).

Rural Vermont, for example, has only three electoral votes. Giant California, meanwhile, has 54.

There are 538 total electors spread across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. To take the White House, a candidate must win 270 votes.

774,000

The number of election workers who volunteered to make sure the 2020 election ran smoothly, according to the Pew Research Center.

There are three types of election staff in the United States.

Most are poll workers — recruited to do things like greet voters, help with languages, set up voting equipment and check voter IDs and registrations.

Election officials are elected, hired or appointed to perform more specialized duties, such as training poll workers, according to Pew.

Poll watchers are usually appointed by political parties to observe the vote count — expected to be particularly contentious this year due to Trump’s refusal to agree to unconditionally accept the result.

Many election workers have already spoken to AFP about the pressure and threats they are receiving ahead of the November 5 vote.

270 million and 78 million

Harris’s team spent $270 million on its campaign in September, while Trump’s spent far less — just $78 million, the official filing shows.

According to the New York Times, Harris’ campaign set a record for the biggest fundraising quarter ever this fall, raising $1 billion since entering the race after Joe Biden withdrew in July.

244 million

The number of Americans who will be eligible to vote in 2024, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

How many of those will actually cast their votes remains to be seen, of course. But the Pew Research Center says the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential vote produced three of the largest such turnouts seen in the United States in decades.

“About two-thirds (66%) of the eligible voting population turned out in the 2020 presidential election — the highest rate for any national election since 1900,” Pew says on its website.

That translated to nearly 155 million voters, according to the Census Bureau.

41 million

As of Oct. 27, more than 41 million Americans had voted early, according to a University of Florida database.

Most US states allow in-person voting or mail-in voting to allow people to deal with scheduling conflicts or the inability to cast their ballots on Election Day, November 5.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)