![]() “In Alabama, you have to have a driver’s license to vote in most places,” she said. “But it also makes it really hard for people to vote, because if you live in one end of, you might find it quite hard to get to a polling place, for example.”Īctive voter suppression is another serious issue, according to Percy. “You see this on both side of politics – there’s a big move to create electoral districts which will continue to support a certain type of candidate,” she said. ![]() For example, California, as a large state, has 55 electoral votes, whereas Wyoming, as a small state, only has three.Īnother oddity Percy referred to was the absence of an independent electoral commission, meaning US states can create their own electoral rules and boundaries.Ī key consequence of this is gerrymandering, where electorate boundaries are manipulated to secure an unfair political advantage for a certain party, group or individual. The number of electors is determined by the number of senators (every state has two) plus the number of people elected to congress in the state, which is based on respective populations. What makes it interesting is that each state has a different portion of the national 538 electors, designed to roughly reflect population and ensure fair representation of the state in federal politics. He needs a combination of state wins that give him 270 votes or more to achieve the presidency, regardless of how he polls overall. So if Biden wins the popular vote in North Carolina, for example, he’ll get all of the Electoral College votes from that state, which is 15 electoral votes. The way the Electoral College works is that whoever wins the popular vote in a state gets all the Electoral College votes from that state. To become President, a candidate must secure a 270 vote majority – hence Clinton’s 2016 loss, with only 232 of the Electoral College votes.īut how does a candidate win the popular vote and lose in the Electoral College ballot? In the Electoral College system, there are 538 electors across the country, divided differently across the states. The Electoral College was established in the Constitution as a mechanism to combat ‘tyranny of the majority’ and support federalism by ensuring meaningful representation for regional or sparsely-populated states. The US electoral system has a few key quirks, one of which is the Electoral College. In a recent Global Leadership Series webinar, Associate Professor Sarah Percy explored some of the oddities in the US electoral system that made Donald Trump’s surprise result in 2016 possible: the Electoral College and the absence of an independent electoral commission. It’s the question that has baffled observers of the 2016 election and one that hovers over 2020 forecasts, with polls showing Biden currently leading with a comfortable 87 per cent likelihood of victory. How was it possible the polls got it so wrong? While Clinton did win the popular vote – and by 3 million ballots – her fall was to the Electoral Colleges, where she won only 232 votes to Trump’s 306. Pre-election polls showed a clear lead for Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton in the presidential race, including polling aggregation website FiveThirtyEight, which predicted a 71 per cent likelihood of victory for Clinton. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 to the helm of the global superpower state was – largely – unexpected. President Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19, the presidential debates wrapped on October 22, and after Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed away in September, Amy Coney Barret has been sworn in to a lifetime position as the next US Supreme Court justice, preserving a conservative majority well into the future.Īs we approach the election, we can reflect on the same moment four years ago, and remember how it felt to watch the world change. Less than a week out from the US election, the world is waiting for an outcome that will have huge ramifications both in the US and across the globe.Ī lot has happened in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.
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