Electoral College Votes Vrs Popular Vote

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Electoral College Votes Vrs Popular Vote
The 2016 US presidential race will go down in history for many reasons as a truly extraordinary election.

Although the final vote tallies are not yet in, the indications are that Hillary Clinton will become the fifth presidential candidate to lose the election despite winning the popular vote.
For those of you not familiar with the intricacies of the US system of electing a president, it’s a two-step process. Each state is worth a set number of electoral college votes. In most states, the winner of the popular ballot gets all that state’s electoral college votes (unless members of the electoral college choose not to vote for them, but let’s not get into that for the moment).

Who selects the Electors?
Choosing each state's Electors is a two part process. First, the political parties in each state choose slates of potential Electors sometime before the general election. Second, on Election Day, the voters in each state select their state's Electors by casting their ballots for President.

The first part of the process is controlled by the political parties in each state and varies from state to state. Generally, the parties either nominate slates of potential Electors at their state party conventions or they chose them by a vote of the party's central committee. This happens in each state for each party by whatever rules the state party and (sometimes) the national party have for the process. This first part of the process results in each Presidential candidate having their own unique slate of potential Electors.

Political parties often choose Electors for the slate to recognize their service and dedication to that political party. They may be state elected officials, state party leaders, or people in the state who have a personal or political affiliation with their party's Presidential candidate. (For specificinformation about how slates of potential Electors are chosen, contact the politicalparties in each state.)

The second part of the process happens on Election Day. When the voters in each state cast votes for the Presidential candidate of their choice they are voting to select their state's Electors. The potential Electors' names may or may not appear on the ballot below the name of the Presidential candidates, depending on election procedures and ballot formats in each state.

The winning Presidential candidate's slate of potential Electors are appointed as the state's Electors except in Nebraska and Maine, which have proportional distribution of the Electors. In Nebraska and Maine, the state winner receives two Electors and the winner of each congressional district (who may be the same as the overall winner or a different candidate) receives one Elector. This system permits the Electors from Nebraska and Maine to be awarded to more than one candidate.

There are currently 538 available electoral college votes. The would-be president needs to secure 270 of these to win. At the time of writing Clinton was on track to lose by 74 electoral college votes (final results for New Jersey and Michigan are not yet in), despite being ahead in the popular vote.

The last time the electoral applecart was upset in this fashion was in 2000. In controversial circumstances George W Bush took Florida, allowing him to reach the 270 vote target – just. He secured 271 electoral college votes to Al Gore’s 266 (one elector abstained from casting an electoral vote for the latter).

Prior to that election, it had been 112 years since another Republican candidate, Benjamin Harrison, secured a majority of electoral college ballots while losing the popular vote.

It was (yet another) Republican who this system first advantaged in 1876: Rutherford B Hayes won out by just one electoral college vote, despite more than 250,000 fewer ballots being cast for him than his main opponent, Samuel J Tilden.


Arguably the strangest happening of all, however, was in 1824, when John Quincy Adams won the presidency even though Andrew Jackson had received more popular votes and more electoral votes. Because none of the candidates in the race reached the required number of electoral college votes, the decision was left to the House of Representatives, which opted for Adams.

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