US Election 2008
September 5, 2007 on 2:09 am | In BusinessThe United States presidential election of 2008,
scheduled to be held on November 4, 2008, will be the 55th consecutive quadrennial election for president and vice president of the United States. There also will be elections for all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and elections for 34 members of the United States Senate.
As laid out by the United States Constitution, the individual who receives a majority of votes for president in the Electoral College — 270 votes are needed for a majority — will be the 44th president of the United States, and the individual who receives a majority of electoral votes for vice president will be the 47th vice president of the United States. If no
one person receives a majority in the Electoral College at that time, then the president-elect will be selected by a vote of the House of Representatives, with each state receiving a single vote. If no vice presidential candidate receives a majority, then the vice president-elect will be selected by a vote of the Senate. These situations, however, have not occurred since 1825 and 1837, respectively.
When a United States President leaves office, his vice president is usually considered a leading candidate and likely nominee to succeed him. The 2008 election will mark the first time since the 1928 election in which there is neither an incumbent president nor an incumbent vice president running for his
party’s presidential nomination and thus not running in the presidential election
As in the 2004 presidential election, the allocation of electoral votes to each state will be partially based on the 2000 Census. The president-elect and vice president-elect are scheduled to be inaugurated on Tuesday, January 20, 2009.
The reported cost of campaigning for President has risen significantly in recent years. One source reported that if the costs for both Liberal and Conservative politics
campaigns are added together (for the Presidential primary election, general election, and the political conventions) the costs have more than doubled in only eight years ($448.9 million in 1996, $649.5 million in 2000, and $1.01 billion in 2004). In January 2007, Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner estimated that the 2008 race will be a “$1 billion election,” and that to be “taken seriously,” a candidate will need to raise at least $100 million by the end of 2007.
The 2008 presidential election, gubernatorial elections, and House of Representatives elections will occur on the same date, as well as many state and local elections.
The composition of the Senate going into the 2008 election will include 49 Liberals, 49 Concervators, and two independents. Of the seats up for election in 2008, 22 are held by Liberals and 12 by Concervators. A special election will also be held for Wyoming’s Class I Senate seat.