US Election Explainer: New governments and where Project 2025 fits in

• Elections in the US are a changing of the Civil Service - unlike the UK

• A new President can be expected to appoint 4,000 appointees to new roles

• In 2016 the Trump campaign was not ready - yet they are prepared this time

• Project 2025 calls for a Government loyal to Trump and proposes many authoritarian measures

• Check out our 2024 US Presidential Election Live Blog here

• View Betfair Exchange politics markets as you have never seen before at Betfair Predicts

US Election means change of the Civil Service

US Elections are a momentous occasion for a number of reasons.

One can't ignore the fact that, in the 2020 election, over 158 million votes were cast, making the US Election one of the biggest exercises of democracy the world has ever seen.

This year's election will almost certainly match that - and it will cap a year that has seen more than 100 countries - over half the global population - cast a vote, with approximately 4 billion people eligible to vote in 2024.

Yet in many countries, while the head of government changes, and ministers and members of the legislature might change, the rest of the government apparatus stays largely the same.

Not in the United States.

An incoming president has many items in his - or her - in-tray. One of them is ensuring their administration makes the 4,000 or so political appointments that a new administration has to fill.

According to a 2011 study, the United States surpasses the majority of other democracies in its sheer number of political appointments.

The numbers are astounding. Over 1,100 of these presidential appointees even require Senate confirmation, including Cabinet Secretaries, CFOs, General Counsels, Ambassadors, and so on.

Why does the President choose their Civil Service?

To understand why the President chooses their senior government officials, you have to dive back into the United States' history.

In the United States, political appointments derive originally from a patronage system known as "the spoils system", where the winning political party of an election would give government jobs to loyal supporters.

This practice originates from President Thomas Jefferson's tenure - which was before the Republican and Democratic Parties were even founded - as a way to keep the rival Federalist party out of Government.

We covered the complicated history of the Democrats and Republicans in a recent Betfair Explainer here.

The patronage system thrived in those early days, but eventually the term limits on Government officials to four-year terms led to huge turnover and shortage of staff. The patronage system had also been extended to lower-level positions, meaning a change of government was chaotic.

A series of reforms formalised the civil service and reduced patronage systems.

Yet there remains a great number of positions that only the president and his team can fill.

Trump didn't have plan for government in 2016

Practically, this changing of the guard entails a huge amount of preparation work. To shortlist, vet, and choose up to 4,000 appointees takes time, effort, and resources.

Transitional committees hold the key here. The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 dictates important procedures for the federal government to prepare for a transfer of power between one administration to the other.

This involves securing the nominations of heads of critical Government agencies, and preparations for a transition of power at the top of government.

The level of preparation varies wildly depending on the campaign. An incumbent president will have a much easier task the second time around, given they have already appointed many of these positions already.

A new administration will have challenges appointing so many roles in so little time. Yet more challenging than that even, is the job that the Trump administration had in Trump's first term.

He was believed to have a small chance of winning the 2016 election. The odds from the time reflect this - three weeks out from the 2016 election, Trump was at 5/16.00, giving him a 17% chance of winning.

That meant the Trump team and the Republican Party had not got into gear to prepare for a new administration. The vacancies in high-level Government positions reflects that.

Vacancies in posts needing Senate approval have been a problem for a while - for instance, in February 2013 after Barack Obama's second election, there remained 68 positions that were vacant of the presidential appointments requiring Senate approval.

Yet this reached a new height during Trump's presidency. In 2017, Trump announced he did not intend to fill many of the positions that were still vacant, of which there were approximately 2,000.

As of mid-2020, 65% of Senate-confirmed positions at the Homeland Security Department went unfilled, as did 55% of such positions at the Justice department.

The inconsistency between administrations has hobbled policy delivery in recent years.

President Joe Biden managed to pick 650 nominees to fill roles in his administration, according to Our Public Service which tracks 817 of the 1,200 government positions that require Senate confirmation.

But with Trump's new government efficiency push, who knows how many positions will be filled by a Trump administration should he win.

What is Project 2025?

Project 2025 has been lambasted by many a senior Democratic figure, but what exactly is it, and how does it impact the shape of the US Government?

Project 2025 is an initiative published by a conservative think-tank called The Heritage Foundation, which has been said by many to be the foundational agenda of a second Trump Presidency.

Chastened by the failure in 2016 to prepare a policy platform for the administration, Project 2025 is a vast document covering changes to economic and social policy that an incoming Republican administration ought to enact.

There are many claims that this initiative has deep links to the Trump campaign, and indeed that they are working in lockstep.

Critics call the project authoritarian and Christian nationalist. Legal experts have said it would undermine the rule of law, separation of powers, separation of church and state, and civil liberties.

Importantly, the Project proposes reclassifying thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees.

Given the failure of the previous Trump administration to fill those positions that are appointed, this is a concerning move. Politicising the civil service would be even more concerning - showing just how far Trump will go to secure loyalty in his Government.

A senior official on Trump's campaign said a few days ago that appointees would need to prove "fidelity and loyalty".

Time will tell as to what that will mean for the US government in the coming years should he win.

Now read Betfair US election live blog for the latest betting news