(VNF) - On November 8^th, more than 100 million American voters will cast their ballots to elect the 45^th US President. This is the biggest political event of the year in the US. The race to the White House has been dramatic until its last minute.

The race to the While House has entered the last minutes with the two candidates renewing their attacks on their rivals. Over the past year, Republican candidate Donald Trump has spectacularly narrowed gap with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to become a candidate representing the Republic party and a redoubtable rival of Hillary Clinton in the US election.

But chances to realize his dream of becoming the US President have become fragile following Trump’s controversial arguments on women and sexual abuse allegations. The incident enabled Clinton to lead nine points ahead of Trump in mid-October.

But, it has been not an easy race for Clinton, either, especially after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) decided to reopen investigations on her use of private emails. The consequences of FBI’s decision were huge.

However, Clinton received an unexpected boost to her campaign with just hours left before the US presidential election as the FBI announced on November 5^th night that it had found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in her use of a private email server.

James Comey, the FBI director, took the nation by surprise when he released a second letter in which he said the FBI had not changed its conclusions from its first report on Mrs Clinton in July.

Donald Trump, her Republican rival, immediately reacted, stating that Mrs Clinton was being protected by a “rigged” system. Mrs Clinton’s campaign said last night they were “glad” the issue had been “resolved”.

News of the renewed probe had appeared to fuel a recent slide in Clinton's poll numbers. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Clinton with a 5 percentage point lead over the New York businessman nationally - 44 per cent to 39 per cent support - while races in the swing states of Florida and North Carolina shifted from favoring Clinton to being too close to call.

But the US election system operates in a very different manner. The winning of a candidate doesn’t reflect the votes that he or she receives from the Congress’ members or support from the public. Each state among the 50 states in the US as well as Columbia have electors that each candidate needs to win votes from. Each of the states casts as many electoral votes as the total number of Senators and House of Representatives in Congress.

Most states except for Maine and Nebraska establish a winner-take-all system wherein the ticket that wins a plurality of votes wins all of that state’s allocated electoral votes. This means winning in populous states like California, New York, Texas, and Florida is very important.

Either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, who can win 270 electoral votes, will become the new US President./.

( Compiled by VNF )