Americans are preparing to go to the polls next Tuesday, November 5. A key appointment for the future of a country which is the subject of debate between the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, and the Republican and former president Donald Trumpelect its next president.
The electoral system in the United States has great particularities. The American country is governed by a presidential system in which the president is both head of government and head of state and his election is based on a popular vote.
However, voters do not vote directly for the president, but for the delegates who form what is called the Electoral Collegebody responsible for electing the new President of the United States by absolute majority.
How the “winner takes all” system works
In the United States presidential elections, a total of 538 delegates or members of the Electoral College. Therefore, to win the presidency, a candidate must obtain an absolute majority of at least 270 electoral votes.
The 538 delegates of the Electoral College are distributed among the 50 states proportionally, according to the population of each of them and which are the sum of your congressmen and senators. The District of Columbia also has 3 electors, although it is not a state. Here is how the number of voters is distributed by state:
- California:54
- Texas: 40
- new York:28
- Florida: 30
- Pennsylvania: 19
- Illinois: 19
- Ohio: 17
- Georgia: 16
- Michigan: 16
- North Carolina: 16
- New Jersey: 14
- Virginia: 13
- Washington: 12
- Arizona: 11
- Tennessee: 11
- Indiana: 11
- Massachusetts: 11
- Minnesota: 10
- Missouri: 10
- Wisconsin: 10
- Maryland: 10
- Alabama:9
- South Carolina:9
- Colorado:9
- Kentucky: 8
- Louisiana: 8
- Connecticut:7
- Oklahoma:7
- Oregon:7
- Mississippi: 6
- Arkansas: 6
- Snowfall: 6
- Utah: 6
- Iowa: 6
- Kansas: 6
- Nebraska:5
- New Mexico:5
- WV:5
- New Hampshire:4
- Hawaii:4
- Rhode Island:4
- Idaho:4
- Maine:4
- Alaska:3
- Mountain:3
- Delaware:3
- North Dakota:3
- South Dakota:3
- Vermont:3
- Wyoming:3
- D.C.:3
In each state, the candidate who wins a majority of the popular votes wins all the electoral votes allocated to him, regardless of the proportion of votes obtained by the rest of the candidates. This system is known as winner takes all (“winner takes all”) and applies in 48 states and the District of Columbia.
The only two states that do not use the system of winner takes all are Maine and Nebraska. In their case, they use a proportional distribution system in which each voter is rewarded for each congressional district won, and the state’s overall winner gets two additional electors (corresponding to the two senators).
Consequences of ‘winner takes all
The fact that a candidate wins in a state by a large majority or a small margin is indifferent. Thus, if a candidate obtains 51% of the votes, he receives all the voters belonging to the state in question.
The consequence of this system is that, to take the presidency, It is more useful to win in many states, even if it is with an advantage of one vote, than to win with a few votes, even if it is with an overwhelming advantage of millions of votes. For this reason, less attention is often given to voters in states where the outcome is virtually guaranteed for a candidate.
On the contrary, parties tend to focus your campaign efforts in states that may lean in favor of one party or the other. These are the so-called “Swing states” or “pendulum” states. The candidate who manages to win over all the voters in these states considered key can mean a decisive victory.
And the main disadvantage of this electoral system is that a candidate can win the presidency without having won the popular vote, that is, without obtaining a majority of the votes of the entire country. This has happened in several elections, such as those of 2016, in which Donald Trump got 2.8 million fewer votes than Hillary Clintonbut she won in 30 states to 20 for the Democratic candidate.
