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. Each state gets a single vote. Join the anti-corruption movement Join us Thank you for joining The Movement! Now, the most important thing you can do is invite others to join, too. When we receive the results from any presidential election, we are give two different results: the Electoral College and the popular vote.
The popular vote is simply which candidate has received the most total votes. The short answer is: no, not right now. In other words, real-world candidates hew closely to population when allocating campaign visits within battleground states—indeed they did so with almost surgical precision.
There is no evidence that big metro areas exert any magnetic or intoxicating attraction causing candidates to concentrate disproportionately on heavily populated metropolitan areas or ignore rural areas. For more details on how a nationwide presidential campaign would be run, see this memo. 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:.
You can read more about the myths of big cities. As was discussed in the previous section, a close analogy for a national campaign is studying presidential campaigns in battleground states, where they do indeed campaign in cities, suburban and rural areas. While rural areas have lower population density, advertising and campaigning costs in those areas tend to be significantly lower than urban areas.
The candidates need to win votes in all those areas to succeed overall. Here are the number of general-election presidential campaign events between the party convention and the general election by state for the , and elections:. Another way to look at why states are ignored in presidential elections is to see which states consistently vote for one party or the other. This table shows that 16 states voted Democratic and 22 states voted Republican in all five presidential elections from — Because of the winner-take-all approach that states use to assign their electoral votes, these states, plus some of the others, are almost certain to deliver all their electoral votes to one candidate or the other, and therefore are ignored by the candidates.
Note: The number of electoral votes shown are for , , and elections. DC is counted as a state for purposes of this chart. The second column shows the total number of general-election campaign events for each state out of a nationwide total of Only 8 states received more than a handful of campaign events. Only 1 of the 13 smallest states with 3 or 4 electoral votes received any of the general-election campaign events, namely the closely divided battleground state of New Hampshire.
All the other states in this group were ignored. Only 3 of the 25 smallest states with 7 or fewer electoral votes received any of the general-election campaign events.
All the other small states were ignored. The 3 states that received attention were the closely divided battleground states of New Hampshire, Iowa, and Nevada. The fourth column in the table shows donations from each state scroll the table left to see all the columns.
In , there were general-election campaign events. Notes: 1 Trump percentage is of the two-party vote 2 Population is from census. Only 2 of the 13 smallest states with 3 or 4 electoral votes received any of the general-election campaign events. New Hampshire received 21 because it was a closely divided battleground state.
Maine which awards electoral votes by congressional district received 3 campaign events because its 2nd congressional district was closely divided and, indeed, Trump carried it. Only 9 of the 25 smallest states with 7 or fewer electoral votes received any general-election campaign events.
New Hampshire, Iowa, and Nevada received attention because they were closely divided battleground states. Maine and Nebraska which award electoral votes by congressional district received some attention since just one of their congressional districts was closely divided.
New Mexico received some attention from the Republican campaign only because former New Mexico Governor Johnson was running for President and it appeared his strong home-state support might make the state competitive. Utah received some attention from Republicans because the McMullin candidacy might have made the state competitive. Connecticut and Mississippi also received one campaign event. All the other small states in this group were ignored. Campaign events in Here's a map of the United States with state sizes based on the number of campaign events in Campaign events in This is how the US map looks with state sizes based on the number of campaign events in missing states received no campaign events : State sizes based on campaign events in State winner-take-all statutes adversely affect governance.
Learn More Click on any of the topics below to learn more. These winner-take-all laws are state laws—they are not part of the U. The winner-take-all method of choosing presidential electors was never debated by the Constitutional Convention or mentioned in the Federalist Papers. Only three states had winner-take-all laws in the first presidential election in , and all three repealed them by In , electors were chosen from congressional districts in Massachusetts, from special presidential-elector districts in Virginia, and by counties in Delaware.
State legislatures appointed presidential electors in the other states. Many of the framers of the Constitution were uncomfortable with giving power to the people, and in part devised the Electoral College as a democratic bypass.
The Electoral College was also designed to protect the influence of slave states. Under a provision that counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation in Congress, Southern slave states gained outsize influence in selecting the president.
The system has endured despite the expansion of suffrage and the abolition of slavery. But the problems with the Electoral College extend beyond its historical roots. Basing the elector count off of congressional delegations continues to give disproportionate voting power to people in smaller states.
For example, Wyoming voters have nearly four times as much influence as California voters do. Additionally, under the Electoral College system, electoral outcomes can undermine the popular vote. Because 48 states and Washington, D. As we have seen, their forecast turned out to be correct — twice since The best permanent solution is to amend the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College.
But the system remains intact despite numerous attempts to abolish it in the last two centuries — more than , according to the Congressional Research Service. The candidates who won the popular vote have lost in the Electoral College in two out of the last six presidential elections. In the election, just votes in Florida and a 5—4 Supreme Court decision that prevented a recount kept Al Gore from the White House, even though he received over half a million more total votes nationally than George W.
And in , Donald Trump won the Electoral College by a larger margin than Bush despite receiving 2. But no candidate received a majority of the Electoral College votes, so the race was decided in the House of Representatives. In , Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote, but 20 of the electoral votes were contested. Election Day had been tainted with violence and fraud, and in several states, both parties declared that their candidates had prevailed.
In the Compromise of , the disputed electoral votes were awarded to Republican candidate Rutherford B.
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