Electoral College, Battleground/Swing States

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Overall

• Electoral College: 538 electors; you need 270 (50%+) to win presidential election; Source: USAGov 

  • each state gets as many electors as it has members of Congress (House + Senate);  

  • after you cast your ballot for president, your vote goes to a statewide tally: in 48 states and Washington D.C. the winner gets all the electoral votes for that state (exception: Maine and Nebraska assign their electors using a proportional system) 

  • 5 times the candidate has won the Electoral College and presidency despite losing the popular vote:

    • 2016

    • 2000

    • three times in the 1800s 

  • if no candidate receives the majority of electoral votes: the vote goes to the House of Representatives - has happened twice: 1800 and 1824 elections

• “faithless electors” are rogue Electoral College delegates who refuse to cast their votes for the presidential candidate they were pledged to support; since the founding of the Electoral College, there have been 167 faithless electors (67 cast their votes for a different candidate on their own); there were 10 faithless electors in 2016 who voted, or tried to vote, for someone other than Trump or Hillary Clinton; 32 states have some sort of faithless elector law, but only 15 of those remove, penalize, or simply cancel the votes of the errant electors: Michigan, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Indiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Washington, California, New Mexico, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and North Carolina; Source: NPR and CBS News and Bloomberg 

• 538 electors in the U.S. Electoral College, whom directly vote for the president; they are apportioned by population to the 50 states (one for each member of their congressional delegation, with the District of Columbia having 3 votes); the winner is the first candidate to receive a minimum of 270 electoral college votes (it takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency); Maine and Nebraska are the only 2 states in the United States to offer proportional representation in the electoral votes that they award to presidential candidates, as opposed to the “winner-take-all” system that other states have; Source: We the People and White House and NBC News and AP News and Fortune 

• the Electoral process in the United States consists of: (1) Primary Elections: select each party’s candidates for the general election – Closed Primary: only registered members of a specific political party can vote for that party’s candidates and Open Primary: all registered voters can vote for a party’s candidates; (2) General Elections: select the public official for a particular government position; (3) Ballot Initiatives: laws or policy changes that are proposed by citizens or interest groups and decided through popular vote; (4) Referendum: referring proposed laws that were passed by a legislature to an electorate vote; and (5) Recall Elections: removing state public officials from office during their terms through popular vote; Reference: We the People by Benjamin Ginsberg, Theodore J. Lowi, Margaret Weir, Caroline Tolbert, and Robert J. Spitzer (2014) 

• when Americans cast their ballots for the U.S. president, they are actually voting for a representative of that candidate’s party known as an elector; there are 538 electors who then vote for the president on behalf of the people in their state; the process of nominating electors varies by state and by party but it is generally done 1 of 2 ways: ahead of the election, political parties either choose electors at their national conventions, or they are voted for by the party’s central committee; Source: The Guardian 

• Electoral College: 538 electors decide who will be elected U.S. president and vice president; each state gets as many electors as it has members of Congress (House and Senate); each state’s political parties choose their own slate of potential electors; who is chosen to be an elector, how, and when varies by state; after you cast your ballot for president, your vote goes to a statewide tally: in 48 states and Washington D.C. the winner gets all the electoral votes for that state (exception: Maine and Nebraska assign their electors using a proportional system); a candidate needs the vote of at least 270 electors (more than 50% of all electors) to win the presidential election; in most cases, a projected winner is announced on election night in November after you vote but the actual Electoral College vote takes place in mid-December when the electors meet in their states; while the Constitution does not require electors to vote for the candidate chosen by their state’s popular vote, some states do; the rare elector who votes for someone else may be fined, disqualified, and replaced by a substitute elector, or potentially even prosecuted by their state; 5 times the candidate has won the Electoral College and presidency despite losing the popular vote: 2016, 2000, and three times in the 1800s; if no candidate receives the majoreity of electoral votes: the vote goes to the House of Representatives (has happened twice: 1800 and 1824 elections); Source: USAGov 

• the Electoral College system dictates a presidential election’s winner; the system requires candidates to win uniform blocks of electoral votes from states; there are 538 electors; the Electoral College is a mostly winner-take-all system that delivers a set number of electoral votes per state to the winner of the popular vote there; that number is based on a state’s headcount in Congress – the minimum is three (as in Alaska and Wyoming, for example) and the maximum is 55 (California); there are 538 in total (and 270 are needed to win); the winner of the popular vote has lost the election 5 times (including twice since the year 2000); candidates are compelled by the system to neglect the parts of the country where most people live; Maine and Nebraska are unique in that each can split their electoral votes; the states that have awarded their electoral votes to candidates from different parties (rather than a single party) in the past 3 U.S. presidential elections are: Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida; Source: World Economic Forum 

Battleground and Swing States

• 7 "battleground states" (definition: were won by less than 3 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election): Source: USAFacts and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

  • candidates disproportionately spend time and money on winning these states since they have the potential to be won by either candidate

    • Pennsylvania (19 electoral college votes)

    • Georgia (16 electoral college votes)

    • North Carolina (16 electoral college votes)

    • Michigan (15 electoral college votes)

    • Arizona (11 electoral college votes)

    • Wisconsin (10 electoral college votes)

    • Nevada (6 electoral college votes)

• 5 "swing states" (definition: they voted for current Democratic President Joe Biden in 2020 and former Republican president Donald Trump in 2016): Source: USAFacts and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

  • Pennsylvania (19 electoral college votes)

  • Georgia (16 electoral college votes)

  • Michigan (15 electoral college votes)

  • Wisconsin (10 electoral college votes)

  • Arizona (11 electoral college votes)

• 10 places (25% of the U.S. population) where citizens have the most per-vote power in the presidential race: Source: Washington Post 

  • Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District