How the Electoral College decides US presidential races
By Gavin Clancy, Senior Consultant (Melbourne) and Emily Minson, Director (San Francisco)
In the 2016 US presidential election, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton polled 48.2 per cent of the vote, ahead of her Republican rival Donald Trump, on 46.1 per cent.
That represented a margin of almost three million votes, according to the US Federal Electoral Commission.
But Donald Trump was comfortably elected President, thanks to a particular institutional feature of the US political system.
Observers may think the US votes directly for a Presidential candidate. Actually, the people vote for their respective state’s (and, in the national capital, the District of Columbia’s) members (‘Electors’) of the Electoral College.
It is the 538-member Electoral College that determines who will be President, albeit based on results cast in the election in early November.
Each state party branch, Republican and Democrat, nominate their Electoral College Electors. If their respective presidential candidate wins their state (a simple popular majority) the delegates of the members of the victorious party are called upon to cast their votes in the Electoral College vote, which usually takes place in December.
In 2016, President Trump carried 30 US States and Hillary Clinton carried 20 states. That translated to 304 College votes for Trump and 277 for Clinton. (A handful of votes were cast for minor candidates.)
The Electoral College dates back to the US Constitutional Convention of the late 1700s, when delegates decided against the President being chosen by a direct popular vote or by Congress.
Ultimately, the Founding Fathers settled on a compromise in which each US State would provide voting delegates to the Electoral College, to elect the President and Vice-President. As well, the model reflected the constraints of distance in the late 18th century.
Today, each US State is entitled to a number of Electoral College members according to their level of representation in the US Congress and the US Senate.
In the US, like Australia, each US State is entitled to the same number of Senators – two for each US State – but the number of members of the House of Representatives for each State is based on population, leading to considerably more members of the House hailing from the more populous states.
As such, California has 55 Electoral College votes (for its 53 House seats plus two Senators), while smaller states like Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming each have just three College Electors – one for their House Member and two for both of their Senators.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won three of the five largest states – California (55 votes), New York (29) and Illinois (20). Meanwhile, Donald Trump carried Texas (38) and importantly, Florida (29) and Pennsylvania (20).
The latter two seats are considered Swing States due to their changing voting behaviour. Had Florida and Pennsylvania gone Democrat, Hillary Clinton would have been elected president at the last election.
Indeed, Trump carried Pennsylvania by only around 44,000 votes of the total 6.1 million votes cast.
Under the present State-based rules, the Electoral College operates as a virtual winner-take-all contest: if the presidential candidate wins the majority of votes in a state, then he or she is generally guaranteed (via state legislation) to receive all that state’s entitled College votes.
So, in 2016, California’s 55 votes were allotted to Clinton, while Trump picked up 36 of Texas’ 38 votes, with two cast for independents (more on this later).
The states of Maine and Nebraska, however, have rules that direct their votes according to a proportional share of popular votes received by each presidential candidate in that state.
Four years ago, Maine allocated three votes to Clinton and one to Trump, while post-election all five Nebraskan delegates voted for Trump.
In what is by design or an unexpected loophole, in some states Electors are not required to vote for their party representative. In a tiny number of cases, so-called ‘faithless electors’ may nominate an independent. This occurred in the 2016 election, with seven votes going to other ‘candidates’ (two stray votes came from Texas).
In most US presidential elections, some States will generally be safe for Democrats (e.g. California) and some will generally be safe for Republicans (e.g. Texas).
But it’s the so-called swing states that determine who will be President. These are states with a sizeable population and therefore an important number of Electoral College votes that also tend to be more politically central and can shift party allegiance on a per-election pattern.
In 2016, Trump was able to clinch the US Presidency because he took the swing states of Ohio (18 votes), Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (10), plus Florida’s 29.
That’s 93 Electoral College votes.
Expect therefore, that these battleground states, with their 93 Electoral College votes, will host plenty of visits by Donald Trump and Joe Biden, including town hall forums and most of the polling activities ahead of November 3.
End.
Image: Signing of the United States Constitution by Junius Brutus Stearns, oil on canvas 1856