We are a week and a bit away from the U.S. election. Over many, many months we have seen election polls that show the "popular votes" in America. The polls have varied widely in their predictions and as I write this I can find polls that say that Trump and Clinton are in a tight race and others that predict a clear Clinton lead.
Polling is both an art and a science and learning to carefully read polls is also an art. A few weeks ago, I suggested that a careful analysis should lead poll watchers to look at the state races that will, in fact, determine the outcome of the election.
There has been much talk about the overall popular vote but the American election is not determined by winning a majority of the votes of the electorate in the nation as a whole.
Each state votes and chooses a candidate who will be supported by a group of electors in the Electoral College system.
The Electoral College allocates electors to each state. The Electoral College is made up of 538 Electors: one for each seat in the Senate (100); one for each seat in the House of Representatives (435); and three for the District of Columbia. These 538 people vote for the president and the vice-president of the United States.
In the Electoral College larger states have more electors. This distribution occurs because the number of Electors is based, in part, on the number of seats each state has in the House of Representatives. These seats are determined by population. No state can receive less than one seat in the House so, after the first fifty are distributed (one per state), the remaining seats are allocated. The average population of a congressional district (which you might think of as a riding or constituency) is about 700,000 people.
So, Florida has 27 electors, Texas has 34 and California has 55 whereas Delaware, Montana and South Dakota have three each. So, using this model of electoral vote distribution, Delaware has three Electoral College votes because they have one seat in a congressional district and two state senate seats.
This weighting of electoral votes explains why you will hear the newscaster refer to certain states as critical to a nominee's chances for election.
Electors are chosen in each state by political parties. They make a pledge to vote for the party's winning candidate.
Historically they vote in line with the state's popular vote but they are not required to do so. They may in fact vote for the person who did not win.
This happens very rarely and, in my research, I found that in some states electors could be charged for faithlessness (i.e. breaking the pledge).
All but two states use a winner-takes-all approach to awarding Electoral College votes. If, for example, a candidate wins the popular vote in California, they win all 55 Electoral College votes. Only Maine and Nebraska use a different system. They use the Congressional District Method.
For example, Maine has four electoral votes. They give two votes to the winner of popular vote for the whole state. Maine has two congressional districts.
These votes are awarded to the winner in each district.
So let's say that if in Congressional District No. 1 the Republicans win the most votes in that district then the Republicans win that electoral vote. If the Democrats win in Congressional District No. 2, they win the other electoral vote.
Thus, in Maine it is possible, for example, to have three electoral votes go to the Republicans and one electoral vote goes the Democrats.
A candidate needs 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency and that 270 can be made up of any combination of states' Electoral College votes.
Clearly the most important states to win have lots of electoral votes: California, Florida, Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania for example.
But, in a tight race smaller states are also significant as are Nevada and Utah, for example, in this year's race. The Electoral College is a system designed to respect the states' rights to elect the executive.
On election night on Nov. 8, we will see the system at work but we will have to wait until the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December after the presidential election for the electors to cast their votes.
