The US electoral system is an enigma to many Australians.

Whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will come out on top after the vote on November 8 comes down to a complex system with many moving parts, which is far removed from Australia's Westminster-style democracy.

ABC News has re-interpreted the results of Australia's recent election using the American electoral rules, to untangle the complexities of the system.

President Turnbull

Under a US-style voting system, Malcolm Turnbull would have been elected president of Australia in July 2016, based on the results of that election.

The map below shows the results of the July 2 election re-interpreted using the US system.

States are allocated to either Mr Turnbull or Labor leader Bill Shorten based on the primary, or first-preference vote in each state, with the winner of each state or territory taking all of the electoral votes (the number you see within the state and territory borders) for that state or territory.

Malcolm Turnbull would have attracted 102 electoral votes to Bill Shorten's 64 under a US-style electoral system.

Why would Turnbull have won?

The US votes for a presidential candidate through a system called the electoral college.

ABC journalist and research associate at the US Studies Centre John Barron says that while Americans feel they directly elect the president, they technically don't.

Rather, they elect representatives who cast a vote for president on their behalf.

"The electoral college is effectively a parliament whose sole purpose is to elect the president and vice-president," Barron says.

"It never actually sits, each state certifies the result of the vote in their state and sends it to Washington where it's verified by Congress."

Under this system, each of the 50 states is given a number of votes based on the number of seats that state has in Congress (including the lower and upper houses). The territory of Washington DC, which has no congressional representation, is given three electoral votes under the 23rd amendment.

California, for example, has 53 seats in the house of representatives plus two senators (as all other states do), giving it 55 electoral college votes.

In our Australian map above, states and territories have been awarded electoral votes based on how many electorates they have, plus two senators for each state, which gives a total of 166 and requires a candidate to have 84 votes to win.

NSW, for example, has 47 electorates, and has been allocated two senators, for a total of 49.

Each state was then awarded to the party with the highest House of Representatives primary vote in the state. The Liberal and National vote (including the Liberal National Party in Queensland) was split into its relative components, as the US first-past-the-post system would not allow these two parties to combine their vote in a presidential election.

Under this system, Mr Shorten would win NSW, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory, for a total of 64 electoral college votes.

Mr Turnbull would win Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia, for a total of 102 electoral college votes.

Red state, blue state

In the US system, there are 538 electoral college votes in total. Most states give all of their votes to whichever candidate has the highest vote in that state, with 270 (one more than half) the magic number needed to win, and each state gives its electoral votes to the candidate with the highest votes.

The states of Maine and Nebraska award two electoral votes each to the state winner, and one vote to the winner of each congressional district.

The system in recent years has often resulted in an election results map which looks more Republican than Democrat, even if the Democrats win the presidency.

This is because "Republicans tend to win [geographically] bigger, less populous states with large rural areas and more white voters, Democrats win densely populated states with large urban populations and more ethnic minorities", Barron said.

Looks can be deceiving — the 2012 US election map appears to favour the Republicans, despite Democrats winning the electoral college by over 100 votes. ( 270 to win )

Winner takes all

The nature of the winner-takes-all electoral college system can put the race on a knife's edge.

In the Australian example, if Labor's vote had been around 2.69 per cent (or 71,589 votes) higher in Queensland, or 1.44 per cent (49,202 votes) higher in Victoria, Mr Shorten would have enough electoral college votes to claim the (albeit imaginary) presidency.

Barron says it is also technically possible that a candidate could win the popular nationwide vote by a large margin, and still lose the electoral college vote and the presidency.

"A candidate could win millions more votes in a big state like California or Texas but it doesn't do any more for them in terms of electoral college votes than had they won the state by one vote."

In 2000, former vice-president Al Gore won more votes across the nation but lost the electoral college vote after losing a supreme court battle over the state of Florida.

According to Barron, the electoral college system also works against third-party candidates.

"In 1992 Ross Perot won 19 per cent nationally but didn't win a majority in a single state and so won no electoral votes."

First-past-the-post

A key difference in the US voting system in comparison with Australia's is the use of the first-past-the-post system, where electors are only allowed to mark one candidate.

By contrast, in Australian elections, electors number candidates in order of preference, which means their vote will go to their next preferred candidate if their first choice is not elected.

As ABC election analyst Antony Green wrote in 2004: "The point of the system is to elect the most preferred candidate, to choose the candidate that can build an absolute majority of support in the electorate rather than the simple majority required under first-past-the-post voting."

This system has been in place in Australia since 1918, and allows two parties of similar persuasions to contest a seat without splitting the vote and delivering it to another party with less support.

As Green writes: "In October 1918, a by-election was held in the then rural Western Australian seat of Swan. Labor's 21-year-old candidate polled 34.4% of the vote and won, ahead of the Nationalist [the forbearer of the Liberal Party] candidate on 29.6% and the Country Party [the forbearer of the National Party] candidate on 30.4%. Something needed to be done to prevent the two conservative parties splitting the vote and delivering seats to Labor. The solution was preferential voting."

This system advantaged conservative parties in the early part of last century, but with the shifting political landscape, has come to advantage Labor more today.

The graph below shows how a Labor and a Greens candidate can run in the same seat, without giving the election to a Liberal candidate.

Control of the house

In the US system of government, the president and the parliament are elected separately, which can create a situation where a president of one party has to negotiate a congress controlled by another, as is the case now for Barack Obama.

Under first past the post voting rules, Mr Turnbull's Liberals (not including the Nationals) would be two votes shy of controlling the Lower House in their own right, with 74 seats.

The map below shows how the first past the post system would have disadvantaged Labor in the 2016 election — Labor would have gained 15 seats less.

Labor would have 54 seats, and independents Bob Katter, Cathy McGowan and Andrew Wilkie would have retained their seats.

The Greens would pick up an extra seat in Victoria, bringing their total to two, but in South Australia Nick Xenophon Team's Rebecca Sharkie would have been beaten by the Liberals' Jamie Briggs.

This would leave the Liberals with several options in passing legislation through the house: they could either form a coalition with the Nationals, as they do now, or they could seek the support the Greens or two of the three other crossbenchers to pass legislation.

It should be noted, however, that Australia's use of full preferential voting since 1918 has been a strong contributor to the make-up of the political party scene today, and these results are only a theoretical re-interpretation.

Indeed, Green noted on his blog:

"... with a different electoral system, you may have had different candidates and a different campaign leading to different results. For instance, under simple majority rules the Greens may not have polled as well in the seats where Green preferences elected a Labor MP [at the 2007 election]. The electoral system interacts with party politics, it is not separate from it."

The senate

The US senate rules are much more difficult to use in re-interpreting Australian Senate results, due to the differences between the two systems and the arbitrary rotation of senate terms in the US.

In Australia, 12 senators in each state are elected for six-year terms, and half the seats in the senate are up for election every three years, with the exception of the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory, which elect two senators to three year terms.

In the US, each of the 50 states has two senators, which serve six-year terms, with roughly a third of the senate up for election every two years.

According to the US Library of Congress, senators in the first congress drew lots to decide whether their terms would expire in two, four or six years, which divided senators into classes.

No state has two senators in one class, so a third of states vote for one senate vacancy every three years.

This year, the states of North Carolina, Missouri, New Hampshire, Indiana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Colorado, Ohio, Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Iowa, Alaska, Georgia, South Carolina, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Kansas, Washington, Oregon, South Dakota, Maryland, Idaho, Utah, Alabama, Vermont, North Dakota, New York and Hawaii have senators up for election.