Key facts
- The Electoral College is a group of 538 representatives who actually vote for the president.
- The popular vote in each state determines who will represent that state in the Electoral College.
- The system allows a handful of states to be far more important in deciding the winner of a presidential election than the rest of the country.
Every four years, North Carolina has been the place to be for fans of popular music. In 2012, Alicia Keys made a surprise appearance at a park in Raleigh. Four years later, Ne-yo and Pharrell Williams both put on separate free concerts. And in 2020, Jon Bon Jovi did the same. Outside of the music scene, Will Ferrell made an appearance, hamming it up in the parking lot tailgate parties of a football game.
Next year, however, there’s a good chance the free music train comes to a stop … or at least moves a couple of states to the south. Why? Because of a frequently misunderstood factor in American presidential politics—the Electoral College.
What Is the Electoral College
When you vote for president, you’re not actually voting for president … and your vote doesn’t count the same as people who live in other parts of the country. That’s because the founders of the country created a second level to the presidential election process—the Electoral College.
The members of the Electoral College are the ones that actually vote directly for president. For the rest of us, our votes determine who gets to vote as part of the electoral college process. Here’s how it works:
Each state is given a certain number of electoral votes based on its population. California had 55 votes in the 2020 election, New York 29. Alaska had just three. So did Delaware, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
The candidate who wins the popular vote in a state gets to pick the majority of the electoral college members that come from that state. In most states, it’s winner-take-all. Joe Biden won California in 2020, getting 63% of the popular vote, while Donald Trump got 34%. But, as the winner, Biden got to choose Democrats as the 55 electoral college voters from the state. Even if Biden had won the state by just one vote out of millions cast, he’d have gotten all 55 electoral votes.
A small, but growing, number of states break up the electors based on the margin of victory in the state.
There are 538 electoral votes available to be won, across the country, meaning that a candidate who wins enough states to reach 270 votes is the winner.
What Can Go Wrong?
The biggest potential pitfall in using the Electoral College is that a candidate can win the national popular vote but lose the election. That has happened five times in the history of the country, including, most recently, in 2016 and 2000.
Basically, each election comes down to a handful of states where there are a significant number of electoral votes and the result is expected to be close. For example, even though California has the most electoral votes, it is heavily Democratic. So for most elections, candidates and political betting sites don’t spend a great deal of attention there, assuming that the Democratic candidate will get those votes.
Instead, they spend their time and money on the “swing states”, where the electoral votes will be up for grabs. That’s why North Carolina and its 15 electoral votes got so much attention recently. Candidates pulled out all the stops, making multiple visits and sending celebrities to rallies to try to swing votes in their direction.
This coming year, however, it appears that North Carolina is more likely to vote Republican, and that means there are other states more likely to decide the election. Most observers expect Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona to be the key states. So people who live there can expect to see plenty of TV ads, have plenty of visits from candidates and celebrities, and get plenty of robocalls, compared to other areas of the country.
In 2000 and 2016, the Republican candidates (Bush and Trump, respectively) were able to identify the key states and win them by small margins, while writing off large states where the margin wasn’t as close. As a result, they lost those states by huge margins—enough to swing the national popular vote in the Democratic candidate’s favor.
What Can Go Really Wrong
The electoral college was the reason behind the January 6 riots after the last election. The nation voted in early November, and Biden won the electoral vote, although Trump complained that the results were tainted. The Electoral College met and cast its votes in December and on January 6, Congress was going to officially count the votes and certify the results. That’s why the rioters invaded the Capitol building, to try to stop the vote from being counted. Because even though we voted two months earlier, it wasn’t over until the electoral college said it was over.
Why Do It Like This?
There is a push by many to end the Electoral College and just go with a national popular vote. The fear, originally, was that if it was done that way, candidates would ignore most of the country and just focus on the major cities and population centers. Of course, candidates are still ignoring most of the country now, just for a different reason.
The push for change has been stronger in recent years, but in general, the party in power in Washington at any given time is usually the one that played the Electoral College game better the last time around, and they don’t see any reason to change things right away. So it’s unclear when, if ever, there will be enough support to use a different methodology.
Until then, people in swing states will find their votes far more important in deciding the election, and their popularity level far higher every four years.
