Americans don’t directly elect their president. Here’s how the Electoral College works, why a few swing states decide the outcome, and how someone can win without the most votes.
When Americans vote for president, they are technically voting for a group of people called electors, who then formally choose the president. Together, those electors are known as the Electoral College.
There are 538 electors in total. Each state gets the same number of electors as it has members of Congress: one for each of its seats in the House of Representatives, plus two for its senators. Washington, D.C., which has no voting members of Congress, gets three. To win, a candidate needs a majority, at least 270.
Because House seats are based on population, California has the most electors, with 54. Several small states, including Wyoming, Vermont and Alaska, have the minimum of three. The numbers are adjusted after every census, held every 10 years.
Winner takes all
In 48 states and D.C., the candidate who wins the most votes in that state gets all of its electors, even if the margin is tiny. Only Maine and Nebraska split some of their electors based on results in individual districts.
That’s why campaigns focus heavily on a small number of “swing states”, where either party could win, such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina. States that reliably vote for one party get far less attention.
It’s also why the overall national vote doesn’t decide the winner. In 2000, George W. Bush beat Al Gore after winning Florida by a few hundred votes, despite Gore winning more votes nationally. In 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency while Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost three million. In 2024, Trump won both, with 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226.
What happens after election day
After the election, each state certifies its results. The electors meet in their states in December to cast their votes, which are then sent to Washington. Congress counts the electoral votes in a joint session on 6 January, and the new president is sworn in on 20 January.
If no candidate reaches 270, the House of Representatives chooses the president, with each state’s delegation getting one vote. That hasn’t happened since 1825.
The Electoral College was designed by the country’s founders as a compromise between a popular vote and having Congress choose the president, and to give smaller states more say. Critics argue it gives too much power to a handful of states, and there have been many proposals to abolish it. But changing it would require amending the U.S. Constitution, which is extremely difficult.
The next presidential election is in November 2028.
