The electoral college.
So in the U.S., the president and vice president are not really chosen directly by popular vote… KINDA. Instead, they’re chosen by the electors.
🛑 Your vote DOES COUNT so to truly understand the dynamics, keep reading (or watch the video at the end)!
Every state has as many electors as the members they have in Congress. That means: the number of senators they have -always two- plus the number of representatives in the House. So for example, California has 55 electors.
Between all states, there’s a total of 538. Are we good so far? Good. Now how does this whole thing work? So each presidential candidate has political parties, basically their entourage, in every state.
These parties choose a bunch of people they think would be good electors. So staying with the California example, the democratic party will choose 55 people to be their electors and the republican party will choose their 55.
On Election Day, we all go and vote and if, let’s say Biden wins in California, Biden gets 55 electoral votes. All states except -Maine and Nebraska- work like that where whoever wins, gets ALL votes. So technically we the people go and vote so that our preferred candidate receives those electoral votes.
A candidate needs at least 270 voters -more than half of the total - to win the presidential election. Part of a presidential candidate's strategy is going around a bunch of states campaigning hoping that they can win those electoral votes. So one strategy could be going for the big ones like California, Texas or Florida. Or they could go for one big state and a bunch of little ones, etc. This is why swing states are also so important.
The whole idea of the electoral college is to make sure that smaller states could get some love from the candidates. Otherwise they’d be like whatever Wyoming BUT since they have 3 electors...hey anything helps. Finally, on December 14, the electors meet in their respective states and vote for president and vice president. The Constitution does not require them to vote for the party that selected them, but it is rare for any not to do so.
My face…😒