I'm not trying to sound stupid.
Can anyone explain to me in real simple terms, how the Electoral College works? I know 270 seats win race. To get to the 270, does each candidate have to rely on their party members getting elected in local areas or do US citizens literally vote ''Trump'' or ''Harris''?
@Garnacho Libre
the system
States vote for president, not people. Each state has a set number of "votes" based on senators (always 2) and population size. This means that California and Texas, who have a huge population also has more "votes". You might notice on maps that most of the US is red, but blue still has more "votes". That is because the blue areas have more people. Texas has 40 votes, California has 54, Pensylvania has 19, and a small state like Montana has 4.
When you take every vote each state has and count them all, you get 538 "votes".
how it works
On election day people vote for the candidate they want by name - either Trump or Harris (or someone else on the ballot, but they are essentially irrelevant unless they are Theodore Roosevelt). After an election, states look at who the people in their state voted for, and cast their "votes" for that candidate. Because that system is really old, those votes are cast by people who travel to the state capital and represent the people. These people are called electors. Once there they cast their votes for who should be president, which the state writes down and sends to Washington to be counted by Congress on Janaury 6th.
Currently the majority of states have decided that the candidate the majority of people within the state vote for is who all their electors will vote for too. There are exceptions, such as Maine and Nebraska who have different rules. Those rules mean that those votes can sometimes be split between candidates (which is why you will see Nebraska 2nd district mentioned here as seperate from Nebraska).
Sometimes an elector decides to vote for someone else than they are supposed to, we call these "faithless electors". This is fairly rare, and these days parties go to great lengths to ensure that doesn't happen, but they are mostly allowed to do this. No one really knows what would happen if faithless electors changed the outcome of an election.
In total 538 registered votes should arrive in Washington. To win the presidency you need a simple majority. Which is half of the total votes + 1. Half of 538 is 269, so to win a majority you need 270 votes - or electors.
This is the process Trump tried to coup January 6th 2020.
but election results are clear before Jan 6th?
Because we live in a digital age we know well before January 6th who has won 270 "votes". When we know what people in all states voted, we also know who has "won" enough "votes" in the electoral college.
you are all obsessed with polls, why?
You might notice a lot of talk about swing states. Most states in the US have a population that are pretty heavily slanted towards either Republican or Democrat. For these we assume that the population will vote overwhelmingly for one candidate. These states are considered safe and included as guaranteed votes in the electoral college.
There are a number of states that aren’t guaranteed too. States that have populations that sometimes votes Republican and other times democrat. These "votes" could go to either candidate. These are battleground states and swing states. This is where the most money is spent on campaigning and essentially where the election winner is determined.
Right now these are Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pensylvania and North Carolina.
but why are you all so fascinated by polls?
Polls are surveys that try to determine (usually fairly accurately) what the people of a state is going to vote. We know that each state has a set number of electoral votes, and we know what electoral votes are safe, which we confirm with polling (+5 is usually pretty safe).
Based on polls we can make simple calculations to see which states a candidate needs to "win" 270 total "votes". This is called "the path to 270". Various combinations of states lead to different number of electoral college votes.
you can lose the popular vote and still win?
Yes. Because the US population is concentrated within a few large states, people within large states make up a smaller % per citizen of the total electoral college votes than the smallest states.
This disproportionately is in every part of the US political system. Every state has 2 senators regardless of population, giving small states considerable power in US politics compared to population size.
Because of that 270 votes doesn't necessarily represent 50%+ of the population.
I hope that helps.
