US presidential election: What if neither Harris nor Trump wins the majority?

The US election on Tuesday will decide whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump moves into the White House. The actual vote then lies with the Electoral College, which consists of a total of 538 voters from all states. Whoever receives at least 270 of these votes becomes president.

But what happens in the extremely unlikely event that both Trump and Harris get exactly 269 votes? The US Constitution has prepared for this only theoretically possible scenario. The decision then moves to the US House of Representatives, the second chamber of the US Congress next to the Senate.

Each state has one vote

In the House of Representatives there are 435 representatives from the states proportional to the respective population size, for example 1 representative from Alabama or 52 from California. In a presidential election, all representatives of one of the 50 states must agree on a candidate. That means: whoever wins 26 delegations becomes president.

The Republicans around Trump currently have an advantage: they currently control 26 so-called delegations, the Democrats around Harris 22. In two states (Minnesota and North Carolina) the balance is balanced. But all seats in the House of Representatives will be re-elected on Tuesday. According to an analysis by the US broadcaster ABC’s “538” portal, the Trump camp’s lead could even increase.

The Senate also appoints vice presidents

If there is a tie in the electoral vote, a similar process would decide who becomes vice president – in this case Democrat Tim Walz or Republican JD Vance. However, the decision will be made in the US Senate. Each of the 100 senators has one vote. The candidate who receives 51 votes wins. Because the elections in the House of Representatives and Senate are independent votes, it is theoretically even possible that in the end the president and vice president belong to different political parties.

Under the current rules, such a scenario for the office of president only occurred once: in the 1824 election, none of the four candidates won a majority of the 131 out of 261 votes in the Electoral College. The House of Representatives then had to decide between the top three finishers. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams won the then-majority of 13 delegations in February 1825 and became the sixth U.S. president.

History of the “Electoral College” in the USA Encyclopedia Britannica on the composition of the “Electoral College” Encyclopedia Britannica on the results of US presidential elections Members of the House of Representatives by state US Miller Center on the election of 1824 Twelfth US Constitutional Amendment on the presidential election Library of Congress on Results of the 1824 presidential election