American politicians say the way they elect their president is one of the most open and democratic processes in the world.

But to outsiders it can also be one of the most baffling. The election race in some countries takes just a few weeks, but US presidential candidates undergo a political marathon, negotiating primaries, party conventions and an electoral college system along the way.

The primary is the first step in choosing a party's presidential candidate. In most countries, the party picks the candidates. But in US, voters who declare support for one party or another get to choose from the list of candidates. The candidates, campaigning against other members of the same party, must win enough state primaries to give them a majority of delegates at the party convention in the summer.

Some states, such as lowa, use a caucus system rather than primaries to choose their delegates. Whereas in primaries people simply indicate at the ballot box which delegates they support, caucuses (the word derives from an Indian word for a gatheri

ng) are more complex and work by selecting delegates through a number of stages.

Could they be more alike, the two political princes, Texas and Tennessee, Harvard and Yale, did they show more different, one so unpolished it is hard to imagine, the other so shiny it hurts to look.

However, bush won with the power of his younger brother's popular reputation. His brother is a governor of Florida.

The delegates from each state formally choose their champion to go forward as presidential candidate. The winning candidate also names a vice-presidential running mate. Policies are refined during the campaign. And there is heavy spending on nationwide television publicity, and there are usually televised debates between the candidates. In the final weeks, the contenders typically concentrate their attention on the big so-called "swing states" as they battle it out for the critical electoral college votes. The election takes place on the first Tuesday in November and the president is not elected directly by the voters. Each state has a number of electoral college members who actually vote for the president on behalf of the people. The number of members reflects the state's representation in congress. Whichever candidate wins the most votes in each state wins all of that state's electoral college members. The other candidates get none - except in Nebraska and Maine, which award additional votes to candidates with significant proportions of the popular vote. Once a candidate gets a majority of members from across the states, the election is over in the public's mind.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1230
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)