The Next Presidential Election

The United States chooses its president once every four years, and the next contest — the 61st quadrennial presidential election — is set for Tuesday, November 7, 2028. It shares its slot with Election Day proper but comes around only in years divisible by four, when the White House itself is on the ballot alongside the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate.

How we get this date. Rather than recompute a four-year cycle, the countdown reads from a small hand-verified table of election dates. Each entry is the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November in a presidential year, so every date lands between November 2 and November 8: 2028-11-07, then 2032-11-02, 2036-11-04, and on from there. Pulling from a checked table keeps the page accurate across decades without trusting arithmetic on leap years and weekday drift.

What you are actually voting for. On that Tuesday, voters do not mark a ballot for the president directly. In each state they choose a slate of electors, and it is those 538 members of the Electoral College — 270 of whom are needed to win — who cast the deciding votes weeks later in December. The popular vote reported on election night is the count that determines how each state awards its electors.

Presidential elections have run on this four-year rhythm since 1788-89, when George Washington was chosen as the first president. The November timing was standardized by the Presidential Election Day Act of 1845, which set one national day for choosing presidential electors; Congress later applied the same Tuesday to House elections (1872, in force from 1876) and to Senate elections (1914, after the 17th Amendment). For reference, 2020 was the 59th such election and 2024 the 60th, which makes 2028 the 61st. Whatever the year, the shape is the same: a single national date, results tallied that night, and a constitutionally scheduled handoff that follows the next January.