In American elections, it does not matter who is the favorite in the race. Even with a majority in the pocket, both Donald Trump and his rival Joe Biden can lose. This is what happened in 2016, for example, when 48% of voters voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton and only 46% voted for the current American president.
This is because, unlike in most other countries, the result of the U.S. presidential election does not depend on who gets the most votes. The winner is determined by the so-called “electoral college.
The electoral college is a group of representatives from each of the 50 U.S. states, and they vote for the president. Each state is assigned a certain number of electors, depending on how many people live there. California, for example, has 55, and Wyoming has three.
As a rule, the electors support the candidate who gets the most votes in that state. It turns out that whoever wins the popular vote in California will get 55 more votes from the electoral college.
To win, a presidential candidate must get at least 270 electoral college votes. There are a total of 538 electors in the U.S.: 435 state representatives, 100 senators and three additional voters from Washington.
How did the electoral college system come about?
When the founding fathers of the United States, the group of politicians who developed the foundations of American statehood, were writing the Constitution in 1787, they wondered how to properly elect the country’s president and vice president.
After the war with the British monarchy ended, politicians were concerned that the executive branch might be too powerful. Historians say some of the founders of the United States distrusted direct democracy, and others worried about balancing the interests of individual states.
“Some wanted a president elected by Congress, while others wanted him independent of it. The constitutional convention was coming to an end, and the delegates were tired. Eventually they came to a compromise, and decided that the president should be chosen by the states, not Congress,” said David Redlawsk, a political science professor at the University of Delaware.
Many historians argue that the American electoral system was also influenced by the slave trade. The compromise found during the convention allowed Southern states to get more electoral votes at the expense of the slaves living in those territories. Historians call this event the three-fifths compromise.
Each state now elected a certain number of electors, each with two votes. The elector could not cast both of these votes for people who lived with him in the same state. This restriction eliminated the possibility that the electors would only vote for representatives of their own state. The person who received the most votes became president, and the runner-up became vice president.
The electoral college system was changed after the 1800 election, in which the House of Representatives was forced to determine the winner after a tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.
The 12th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1804, created a system that is still in use today. Voters vote for president and vice president separately, so multiple candidates cannot win a majority in a presidential election.
“The system wasn’t carefully thought out, it was created before there were political parties, so no one could have known how it would work with the existence of political parties and the electoral college,” Redlawsk said.
Fluctuating states
There are two major political parties in the United States, the left-leaning Democratic Party and the conservative Republican Party. Most states predictably vote for either Democrats or Republicans time after time. In a few states, the results are more often than not less obvious. It is usually there that candidates work hard during the campaign.
These states in 2020 include Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Iowa, and Ohio, among others. States that have typically voted Republican, such as Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia, are also considered potential swing states this year.
What are the contradictions?
The electoral college gives “smaller states far more power in choosing a president than their populations require, compared to larger states,” Redlawsk says.
For example, California has 55 votes and Wyoming three, even though California has about 68 times the population of Wyoming.
In addition, the panels of all but two states distribute votes on a winner-take-all basis. “That means that those who vote for a candidate who didn’t win the state are essentially not reflected in the results,” Redlawsk explained.
That’s why it’s possible to win the popular vote but lose the election. Despite the criticism, however, the system is unlikely to change because changing the system requires a constitutional amendment.