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Last US election a lot of people I saw didn’t really understand how the system worked and what to look for. Here’s a thread on that for dummies 
The US has a complicated system of electing the president called the Electoral College. To win you need to have 270 electoral votes out of a possibility of 538.
Each state gets some electoral votes, which are roughly allocated by population. Big states like California (55) have more than small states like Wyoming (3).
But most of the states vote the same way every time. So don’t get the lighters out when New York gets declared for Biden really early on. It was always going to vote for Biden. Each party has a few states that are “safe” and won’t change.
States that vote for Democrats are usually urban and/or northern states like California and New York. Republican states are usually southern like Tennessee and Alabama.
A lot of safe states will be called for one party as soon as the polls close. Unless it’s a battleground state (more below) it doesn’t really matter because we already knew that was going to happen. So don’t start celebrating when New York declares for Biden.
There are about 10-15 states that are the only ones to watch this election. These ones are swing states or battlegrounds and will determine who wins the presidency.
Everyone knows about Florida, but other big ones to watch this election include Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia and Texas.
The other thing is DON’T PANIC if it looks like Trump is winning in some of these states on Election Day. So many people are voting by mail which will take days to count. Mail in voters are much more likely to vote for Biden.
We may not know the result for days or weeks. Or even longer if it ends up in the Supreme Court (which is a very real possibility).
BUT if Biden is doing really well in some states, like Georgia, Texas (expected to go to Trump) or Florida (very close either way), the election will be over and we’ll know who wins on the day.
But if it’s close, we won’t know for weeks until states like Pennsylvania (the most important state this election IMHO) counts their mail in ballots potentially many days later.
This is because mail in ballots are massively more Democratic and in person voters are more likely to be Republicans.
BUT WHAT ABOUT 2016 WHICH SAID HILLARY WOULD WIN? Here’s a few reasons I think Biden will win.
Turnout is looking to be huge - the biggest since 1908. Bigger turnout favours Democrats as these voters often do not vote and can skew the polls.
Texas for example has already had about the same number of people advance vote than voted in the entire 2016 election.
Biden is ahead nationally by about 8 percent. This doesn’t really mean anything because a lot of this vote is centralised in safe states like California who are going to vote for him anyway. But it’s a good indicator of the mood of the country.
