Because we use a system called the Electoral College to elect the president and vice president. Well first thing's first: the Electoral College isn't a place. The Electoral College was created by delegates in as a compromise between electing the president by a vote in Congress, or electing through a popular vote by qualified citizens.
The Electoral College is a system where citizens indirectly elect the president and vice president through a body of electors. Electors are people chosen by their state parties prior to the general election who cast their vote for president on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. Electors almost always cast their vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote in their state, which explains why we have election results available on Election Day.
However, the Constitution does not require them to do so. There have been a few instances where electors defected from their pledged vote, but it has not changed the outcome of an election. The number of electors for each state is equal to the number of U. To win the presidency, a candidate must receive a minimum of electoral votes. For example: Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes. Regardless of how much one candidate wins the popular margin, all 20 electoral votes will go to that one candidate.
In Nebraska and Maine, Electoral College votes are assigned in part by the presidential results in each of their congressional districts.
For example: Nebraska has 5 electoral votes. If no candidate receives Electoral College votes, the president is then selected by the House of Representatives. Massachusetts has changed its method of appointing electors 11 times. The eight smallest states i. In contrast, the closely divided battleground state of Wisconsin with about the same population as the eight smallest states received 40 events. Wisconsin received more attention despite having only 10 electoral votes—compared to 24 electoral votes for the eight states.
However, there is no need to speculate about whether candidates would do this. Here are the facts as to how candidates actually campaigned for the votes of the 95 million people living inside the dozen closely divided battleground states: The biggest metro areas of the battleground states actually received a combined total of general-election campaign visits— compared to if visits had been based strictly on population.
Large cities will not dominate a national popular vote — they are simply not as large as some people think compared to the entire population of the country: The biggest cities contain just one-sixth of the U. The rural areas i. That is, the biggest cities are almost exactly balanced out by rural areas in terms of population and partisan composition.
The remaining two thirds of the U. These suburban areas are evenly divided politically. Here are the number of general-election presidential campaign events between the party convention and the general election by state for the , and elections: Electoral votes. Electoral votes. New Hampshire. New Jersey. New Mexico. New York. North Carolina.
North Dakota. Rhode Island. South Carolina. South Dakota. West Virginia. CA MI VA FL IN OH NC PA AZ WI GA IL MA MD MN MO NJ NY WA Single Accounts Corporate Solutions Universities. Every four years in the United States, the electoral college system is used to determine the winner of the presidential election.
In this system, each state has a fixed number of electors based on their population size, and generally speaking these electors then vote for their candidate with the most popular votes within their state or district. Since , there have been electoral votes available for presidential candidates, who need a minimum of votes to win the election. Because of this system, candidates do not have to win over fifty percent of the popular votes across the country, but just win in enough states to receive a total of electoral college votes.
The use of this system is a source of debate in the U. However, critics argue that this system does not represent the will of the majority of American voters, and that it encourages candidates to disproportionally focus on winning in swing states, where the outcome is more difficult to predict.
Popular results From until , there was no popular vote, and the President was then chosen only by the electors from each state. George Washington was unanimously voted for by the electorate, receiving one hundred percent of the votes in both elections.
From , the popular vote has been conducted among American citizens, to help electors decide who to vote for although the winner was chosen by the House of Representatives , as no candidate received over fifty percent of electoral votes.
Since , the difference in the share of both votes has varied, with several candidates receiving over ninety percent of the electoral votes while only receiving between fifty and sixty percent of the popular vote. The highest difference was for Ronald Reagan in , where he received just Unpopular winners Since , there have been 49 elections, and in 18 of these the winner did not receive over fifty percent of the popular vote.
In the majority of these cases, the winner did receive a plurality of the votes, however there have been five instances where the winner of the electoral college vote lost the popular vote to another candidate. The most recent examples of this were in , when George W. Bush received roughly half a million fewer votes than Al Gore, and in , where Hillary Clinton won approximately three million more votes than Donald Trump. Loading statistic Show source.
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More information. Supplementary notes.
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