To not understand US politics?

[gchali]

I've just read that Trump could receive less votes from the public but could still win the election? I'm really confused and can't understand this.

Sorry if I am being stupid but can somebody please explain?

This happened when he won the first time. It’s called the electoral college system. Here’s the link to an explanation
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2020/oct/30/electoral-college-explained-how-biden-faces-an-uphill-battle-in-the-us-election

Because the votes are counted by State. Then each State has a different number of electors in the electoral college based on population in last census. So large states like California and New York have more electors than smaller less populated states like Wyoming.

It’s the electoral colleges votes that actually count to who wins. Not the individual voters.

This is good explanation: www.nytimes.com/article/the-electoral-college.html

Thanks for the links, they are really helpful. Will there be an exit poll for the election?

It is (in a way) similar in the UK, a party can lose the popular vote but gain more seats in the Parliament.

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]Because the votes are counted by State. Then each State has a different number of electors in the electoral college based on population in last census. So large states like California and New York have more electors than smaller less populated states like Wyoming.

It’s the electoral colleges votes that actually count to who wins. Not the individual voters.

This is good explanation: www.nytimes.com/article/the-electoral-college.html[/quote]
Not all the way true. The public votes to tell the Electora who to vote for.

@gchali

I've just read that Trump could receive less votes from the public but could still win the election? I'm really confused and can't understand this.

Sorry if I am being stupid but can somebody please explain?

Remember that the USA is a union of states. Their government has three branches, the legislative, the judicial, and the executive.

The legislative branch is the congress and the senate, which pass laws. The representatives in congress are based on population, so states with a lot of people, like California, have a lot of congress members, whereas a small state like Rhode Island, has few. The senate is balanced, each state has two senators. This means that when laws have to be passed by both houses, they should represent what most people want, but also the interests of most of the states.

The executive branch means the president, but that's only one person. So the question was, how to make sure the president was chosen in a way that balances the population against representing the views of people in small states. This was done by creating the electoral college system, which has the effect of weighting votes in less populated areas somewhat more than those in more populated areas.

Without this, the three most populated states - which IIRC are California, New York, and Texas, would easily have enough people to determine who the president would be. Anyone running for president could have to have policies that appealed to those people, and totally ignored the interests of the rest of the country.

America has something called the electoral colleague system. Essentially, each state is given a certain number of ‘electors’ who are technically responsible for casting votes for the president. There are 538 in total, divided according to population (so more populous states have more electoral college votes than less populous states). All of the electoral college votes for a state go to the candidate who receives the majority of votes in a particular state. So if more Californians vote for Biden than Trump, all of California’s electoral college votes go to Biden. Candidates need at least 270 electoral college votes to win.

This can lead to situations where a candidate wins the popular vote but not the election - Hilary Clinton was an example of this. It can easily happen, because all that matters is that a candidate gets more votes than their opponent in a state to benefit from all of the electoral college votes. So imagine that Biden wins every single individual vote in California - that gives him 55 electoral college votes. But say trump wins 51% of individual votes in both Texas and Florida. That gives him 67 electoral college votes. He might, therefore, have won significantly fewer individual votes than Biden, but won enough electoral college votes to win the election.

This is why candidates tend to focus their efforts on key states which might go either way - if you’re guaranteed at least half of California’s votes there is no point in campaigning for the other half, because even if they all want to the other candidate you would still have secured the necessary electoral college votes.

@gchali

Thanks for the links, they are really helpful. Will there be an exit poll for the election?

We should start getting unofficial results about 8 to 830 pm state by state. As each State finishes its number of Electoral College votes is awarded to the winner. Whomever gets to 270 or more Electoral College votes first wins. We should find out who wins sometime between Midnight and 2am EST.

@SpeccyLime

America has something called the electoral colleague system. Essentially, each state is given a certain number of ‘electors’ who are technically responsible for casting votes for the president. There are 538 in total, divided according to population (so more populous states have more electoral college votes than less populous states). All of the electoral college votes for a state go to the candidate who receives the majority of votes in a particular state. So if more Californians vote for Biden than Trump, all of California’s electoral college votes go to Biden. Candidates need at least 270 electoral college votes to win.

This can lead to situations where a candidate wins the popular vote but not the election - Hilary Clinton was an example of this. It can easily happen, because all that matters is that a candidate gets more votes than their opponent in a state to benefit from all of the electoral college votes. So imagine that Biden wins every single individual vote in California - that gives him 55 electoral college votes. But say trump wins 51% of individual votes in both Texas and Florida. That gives him 67 electoral college votes. He might, therefore, have won significantly fewer individual votes than Biden, but won enough electoral college votes to win the election.

This is why candidates tend to focus their efforts on key states which might go either way - if you’re guaranteed at least half of California’s votes there is no point in campaigning for the other half, because even if they all want to the other candidate you would still have secured the necessary electoral college votes.

Minor Correction. 48 States have a win it all situation. If the candidate wins he gets all of those electoral college votes. There are 2 states who are allowed to divide thier Electoral College votes. Those States are Maine and Nebraska

@Leaannb I didn’t know that - thank you for sharing!

@SpeccyLime that was really well written and helpful, thank you from another poster who didn't understand the US electoral system either

This is all very helpful thank you, I'm watching it but struggling to get my head around it all!

When you say whoever gets to 270 votes first- isn't that unfair? As what happens if a state is very slow to declare their votes and lots of other states declare there's first and so one candidate wins. But if that state had declared their votes earlier the other candidate would have won. Don't they need to wait until all states votes are in?

It's not really much different here - 57% of people that voted last year here did not vote for the Tories/Boris. He won a 80 seat majority with 43% of the vote.

@studychick81 It wouldn’t make any difference. Getting to that number means they have more than half - so there’s no coming back from that. All votes will still be counted but those that come in after can no longer impact the result.

Thank you @Goosefoot That is one of the clearest and easiest to understand explantions I've seen, over several Presidential elections, and, pt like that, it does seem to be a much more representative system than we have in the UK, where the make up of MPs in Parliament has very little correlation with the way individuals would vote if we had proportional representation.

When you say whoever gets to 270 votes first- isn't that unfair? As what happens if a state is very slow to declare their votes and lots of other states declare there's first and so one candidate wins. But if that state had declared their votes earlier the other candidate would have won. Don't they need to wait until all states votes are in?

No, it doesn’t work that way. Because there are 538 electoral college votes, 270 is a majority - only 268 are left up for grabs elsewhere. So if a candidate is the first to 270, even if the other candidate won every single other electoral college vote, it wouldn’t be enough to win the election.

It’s worth pointing out that the electoral college is far from a perfect system. It was designed to balance state rights so that the most populous states didn’t automatically decide who the president would be - the tyranny of the majority. But in reality it can have the opposite effect and give political factions disproportionate power depending on where their campaigners are. It’s possible to win the electoral college with as little as 22% of the popular vote - that clearly isn’t democratic. A vote in Wyoming is 4 times more powerful than a vote in California. And because the electoral college system creates results which are much closer than the popular vote may be, there is a significantly larger chance that the winner of the election will be determined by unelected Supreme Court judges than by the votes of the nation.

@studychick81

It’s also a bit misleading. Often states are ‘called’ before all of the votes are counted. It’s little more than a very educated prediction on the night of the election based on a sample of results from each state. It’s usually pretty accurate and could prompt a candidate to concede the election.

Now officially the following happens after these states are ‘called’ which could affect the final outcome, but rarely do.

After all the votes are counted, they then have to be certified by each county and then certified by the state. There are different deadlines for this.

Often there are state laws governing recounts, so depending on the winning margin a state may have an an automatic recount provision, or a candidate could request a recount. Then those results would need to be certified.

The official vote totals are often not available until some time in Late November or early December.

We can make a side-by-side comparison. Considering only how the US President vs the UK Prime Minister are chosen, and simplifying over some details.

The UK has 650 constituencies, the USA has 51 states (including DC).

Voters in each constituency or state vote for their preferred party.

The party with most votes in a constituency gets one MP for that constituency. The party with most votes in a state gets all of the multiple electors for that state, known as "winner takes all".

Constituencies are supposed to all have the same number of voters, though it's not exact. States obviously have different numbers of voters, and smaller states get more electors per person, which is deliberate.

The party with most MPs or most electors gets the Prime Ministership / Presidency.

(Of course a big difference is that in the UK the MPs that choose the Prime Minister also form the House of Commons. In the USA you vote for the President and for Congress separately.)

The varying number of possible voters per MP or elector isn't the main reason the winner of the overall popular vote might not win the election. Rather it's about the distribution of votes. A party can win narrowly "where it counts" and lose big where it "doesn't matter", meaning they get the most MPs or electors despite not getting the most votes overall. It happened in the UK in 1951.

Here’s an example... one news source is ‘calling’ the state of Virginia for Biden, even though only 3% of the votes have been reported and currently Trump is leading.

All this means is that there is a very good chance that in the end based on past voting trends that Biden will end up with the most votes in this state.

Watching it I'm now seeing the pattern and it's making a lot more sense to me after years of trying to wrap my head around it.

Some brilliantly clear explanations on this thread - thank you!

@safariboot

We can make a side-by-side comparison. Considering only how the US President vs the UK Prime Minister are chosen, and simplifying over some details.

The UK has 650 constituencies, the USA has 51 states (including DC).

Voters in each constituency or state vote for their preferred party.

The party with most votes in a constituency gets one MP for that constituency. The party with most votes in a state gets all of the multiple electors for that state, known as "winner takes all".

Constituencies are supposed to all have the same number of voters, though it's not exact. States obviously have different numbers of voters, and smaller states get more electors per person, which is deliberate.

The party with most MPs or most electors gets the Prime Ministership / Presidency.

(Of course a big difference is that in the UK the MPs that choose the Prime Minister also form the House of Commons. In the USA you vote for the President and for Congress separately.)

The varying number of possible voters per MP or elector isn't the main reason the winner of the overall popular vote might not win the election. Rather it's about the distribution of votes. A party can win narrowly "where it counts" and lose big where it "doesn't matter", meaning they get the most MPs or electors despite not getting the most votes overall. It happened in the UK in 1951.

We don't have to choose a political party. I'm registered as a Libertarian. I can vote for whoever I want.. so can any democrat,republican or even independent. A Democrat can vote for a republican. A republican can vote Democrat. Smaller States do not get more Electoral Votes. Its based on population. Less population means less Electoral Votes. Larger populated states get more Electoral votes.. Hence why Alaska our largest state only has 3 votes for President

@safariboot

We can make a side-by-side comparison. Considering only how the US President vs the UK Prime Minister are chosen, and simplifying over some details.

The UK has 650 constituencies, the USA has 51 states (including DC).

Voters in each constituency or state vote for their preferred party.

The party with most votes in a constituency gets one MP for that constituency. The party with most votes in a state gets all of the multiple electors for that state, known as "winner takes all".

Constituencies are supposed to all have the same number of voters, though it's not exact. States obviously have different numbers of voters, and smaller states get more electors per person, which is deliberate.

The party with most MPs or most electors gets the Prime Ministership / Presidency.

(Of course a big difference is that in the UK the MPs that choose the Prime Minister also form the House of Commons. In the USA you vote for the President and for Congress separately.)

The varying number of possible voters per MP or elector isn't the main reason the winner of the overall popular vote might not win the election. Rather it's about the distribution of votes. A party can win narrowly "where it counts" and lose big where it "doesn't matter", meaning they get the most MPs or electors despite not getting the most votes overall. It happened in the UK in 1951.

We also have more than 50 constituencies. Each State is divided into districts and they elect Congressman (House of Represenatives). My state has 13 different districts with 13 different Congressmen 10 republican and 3 democrat. Each State has 2 Senators. One Republican and one Democrat