SEYIKP:
Trump wins Indiana

Trump has not won any state. Votes are still coming in from different counties within each state

As we prepare to here results of Early voting , here are states and the number of their electoral college

Alabama 9 Kentucky 8 North Dakota 3
Alaska 3 Louisiana 8 Ohio 18
Arizona 11 Maine 4 Oklahoma 7
Arkansas 6 Maryland 10 Oregon 7
California 55 Massachusetts 11 Pennsylvania 20
Colorado 9 Michigan 16 Rhode Island 4
Connecticut 7 Minnesota 10 South Carolina 9
Delaware 3 Mississippi 6 South Dakota 3
District of Columbia 3 Missouri 10 Tennessee 11
Florida 29 Montana 3 Texas 38
Georgia 16 Nebraska 5 Utah 6
Hawaii 4 Nevada 6 Vermont 3
Idaho 4 New Hampshire 4 Virginia 13
Illinois 20 New Jersey 14 Washington 12
Indiana 11 New Mexico 5 West Virginia 5
Iowa 6 New York 29 Wisconsin 10
Kansas 6 North Carolina 15 Wyoming 3
This article was most recently revised and updated by John M. Cunningham, Readers Editor.
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HomePolitics, Law & GovernmentPolitics & Political Systems
Electoral college
United States

WRITTEN BY
Stephen Wayne
Emeritus Professor of Government, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Author of The Road to the White House, The Legislative Presidency, and others.
Last Updated: Oct 27, 2020 See Article History
How well do you know how the electoral college works?
How well do you know how the electoral college works?
Overview of the U.S. electoral college.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
See all videos for this article
Electoral college, the system by which the president and vice president of the United States are chosen. It was devised by the framers of the United States Constitution to provide a method of election that was feasible, desirable, and consistent with a republican form of government. For the results of U.S. presidential elections, see the table.

Alabama certificate showing the state's electors' votes
Alabama certificate showing the state's electors' votes
A certificate from Alabama showing the signatures of the state's electors in 2000. The nine electors voted for George W. Bush.
Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration
Electoral college
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United States
History And Operation
During most of the Constitutional Convention, presidential selection was vested in the legislature. The electoral college was proposed near the end of the convention by the Committee on Unfinished Parts, chaired by David Brearley of New Jersey, to provide a system that would select the most qualified president and vice president. Historians have suggested a variety of reasons for the adoption of the electoral college, including concerns about the separation of powers and the relationship between the executive and legislative branches, the balance between small and large states, slavery, and the perceived dangers of direct democracy. One supporter of the electoral college, Alexander Hamilton, argued that while it might not be perfect, it was “at least excellent.”

A 1912 poster shows Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and William Howard Taft, all working at desks, superimposed on a map of the United States. The three were candidates in the 1912 election.
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U.S. Presidential Elections
After he left the White House, Pres. Theodore Roosevelt stood for election in 1912 as the candidate of what party?
Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution stipulated that states could select electors in any manner they desired and in a number equal to their congressional representation (senators plus representatives). (The Twenty-Third Amendment, adopted in 1961, provided electoral college representation for Washington, D.C.) The electors would then meet and vote for two people, at least one of whom could not be an inhabitant of their state. Under the original plan, the person receiving the largest number of votes, provided it was a majority of the number of electors, would be elected president, and the person with the second largest number of votes would become vice president. If no one received a majority, the presidency of the United States would be decided by the House of Representatives, voting by states and choosing from among the top five candidates in the electoral vote. A tie for vice president would be broken by the Senate. Despite the Convention’s rejection of a direct popular vote as unwise and unworkable, the initial public reaction to the electoral college system was favourable. The major issue of concern regarding the presidency during the debate over ratification of the Constitution was not the method of selection but the president’s unlimited eligibility for reelection.

The development of national political parties toward the end of the 18th century provided the new system with its first major challenge. Informal congressional caucuses, organized along party lines, selected presidential nominees. Electors, chosen by state legislatures mostly on the basis of partisan inclination, were not expected to exercise independent judgment when voting. So strong were partisan loyalties in 1800 that all the Democratic-Republican electors voted for their party’s candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Since the framers had not anticipated party-line voting and there was no mechanism for indicating a separate choice for president and vice president, the tie had to be broken by the Federalist-controlled House of Representatives. The election of Jefferson after 36 ballots led to the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, which specified separate ballots for president and vice president and reduced the number of candidates from which the House could choose from five to three.

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The development of political parties coincided with the expansion of popular choice. By 1836 all states selected their electors by direct popular vote except South Carolina, which did so only after the American Civil War. In choosing electors, most states adopted a general-ticket system in which slates of partisan electors were selected on the basis of a statewide vote. Thus, the winner of a state’s popular vote would win its entire electoral vote. Only Maine and Nebraska have chosen to deviate from this method, instead allocating electoral votes to the victor in each House district and a two-electoral-vote bonus to the statewide winner. The winner-take-all system generally favoured major parties over minor parties, large states over small states, and cohesive voting groups concentrated in large states over those that were more diffusely dispersed across the country.

Arguments For And Against The Electoral College
EB Insights: Electoral College
EB Insights: Electoral College
Learn more about how the U.S. electoral college functions and how a president is elected.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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One of the most troubling aspects of the electoral college system is the possibility that the winner might not be the candidate with the most popular votes. Four presidents—Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald Trump in 2016—were elected with fewer popular votes than their opponents, and Andrew Jackson lost to John Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives after winning a plurality of the popular and electoral vote in 1824. In 18 elections between 1824 and 2000, presidents were elected without popular majorities—including Abraham Lincoln, who won election in 1860 with under 40 percent of the national vote. During much of the 20th century, however, the effect of the general ticket system was to exaggerate the popular vote, not reverse it. For example, in 1980 Ronald Reagan won just over 50 percent of the popular vote and 91 percent of the electoral vote; in 1988 George Bush received 53 percent of the popular vote and 79 percent of the electoral vote; and in 1992 and 1996 William J. Clinton won 43 and 49 percent of the popular vote, respectively, and 69 and 70 percent of the electoral vote. Third-party candidates with broad national support are generally penalized in the electoral college—as was Ross Perot, who won 19 percent of the popular vote in 1992 and no electoral votes—though candidates with geographically concentrated support—such as Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond, who won 39 electoral votes in 1948 with just over 2 percent of the national vote—are occasionally able to win electoral votes.

The divergence between popular and electoral votes indicates some of the principal advantages and disadvantages of the electoral college system. Many who favour the system maintain that it provides presidents with a special federative majority and a broad national mandate for governing, unifying the two major parties across the country and requiring broad geographic support to win the presidency. In addition, they argue that the electoral college protects the interests of small states and sparsely populated areas, which they claim would be ignored if the president was directly elected. Opponents, however, argue that the potential for an undemocratic outcome—in which the winner of the popular vote loses the electoral vote—the bias against third parties and independent candidates, the disincentive for voter turnout in states where one of the parties is clearly dominant, and the possibility of a “faithless” elector who votes for a candidate other than the one to whom he is pledged make the electoral college outmoded and undesirable. Many opponents advocate eliminating the electoral college altogether and replacing it with a direct popular vote. Their position has been buttressed by public opinion polls, which regularly show that Americans prefer a popular vote to the electoral college system. Other possible reforms include a district plan, similar to those used in Maine and Nebraska, which would allocate electoral votes by legislative district rather than at the statewide level; and a proportional plan, which would assign electoral votes on the basis of the percentage of popular votes a candidate received. Supporters of the electoral college contend that its longevity has proven its merit and that previous attempts to reform the system have been unsuccessful.

In 2000 George W. Bush’s narrow 271–266 electoral college victory over Al Gore, who won the nationwide popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, prompted renewed calls for the abolition of the electoral college, as did Donald Trump’s 304–227 electoral college victory in 2016 over Hillary Clinton, who won the nationwide popular vote by nearly three million votes. Doing so, however, would require adopting a constitutional amendment by a two-thirds vote of both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states. Because many smaller states fear that eliminating the electoral college would reduce their electoral influence, adoption of such an amendment is considered difficult and unlikely.

United States: 2000 presidential election
United States: 2000 presidential election
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Stephen Wayne
Some advocates of reform, recognizing the enormous constitutional hurdle, instead focused their efforts on passing a so-called National Popular Vote (NPV) bill through state legislatures. State legislatures that enacted the NPV would agree that their state’s electoral votes would be cast for the winner of the national popular vote—even if that person was not the winner of the state’s popular vote; language in the bill stipulated that it would not take effect until the NPV was passed by states possessing enough electoral votes to determine the winner of the presidential election. By 2010 several states—including Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey—had adopted the NPV, and it had been passed in at least one legislative house in more than a dozen other states.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
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AmericaDecides2020

SEYIKP:
Trump leading in Florida

Narrowly.he is leading in kenturkey by 8000 votes

MT:


Trump has not won any state. Votes are still coming in from different counties within each state

CNN has given him Indiana sir unofficially

Dansuqi:


Narrowly.he is leading in kenturkey by 8000 votes

He is under performing. Dropping number of votes , compared to what happened 4 years ago.

Trump has won Indiana and Kentucky...he already has 11 electoral votes

Dansuqi:


CNN has given him Indiana sir unofficially

don't mind him itk

MT:


He is under performing. Dropping number of votes , compared to what happened 4 years ago.

It doesn't matter if he wins Florida and Pennsylvania

Dansuqi:



You lie.from CNN,trump is leading in kenturkey by 129,000 to 127,000 for biden

Bro did you see or read not officially confirmed. Nothing can be confirmed now until in an hour time.All these are gossip

AmericaDecides2020

Funlag:
Trump has won Indiana and Kentucky...he already has 11 electoral votes

He hasn't won kenturkey yet.he is leading by 17000 votes

MT:


We expect Kentucky to be solid red but dont lose your sight of it. Biden is still holding there, albeit with less than 2000 votes so far.

Nah
Kentucky is solidly for Trump. Biden can't flip it

busky007:
Bro did you see or read not officially confirmed. Nothing can be confirmed now until in an hour time.All these are gossip

AmericaDecides2020

Oga,tune to CNN na.they are doing it live and realtime

Dansuqi:


It doesn't matter if he wins Florida and Pennsylvania

This is what i am saying. The result you are seeing from those counties are from solid republican base. Results are coming in from some counties that lean towards democrats within the state, if they turn out big, they will overwhelm the votes gather by Trump and the state will turn blue. I hope you understand what I am analysing here. It is the key.

Dansuqi:


CNN has given him Indiana sir unofficially

Early Votes

Trump is leading in Florida. But mostly Republican counties have been counted and his lead margin is smaller than in 2016. Biden is also leading in a county Trump won in 2016 with 75% on that county's vote counted. Hmmm, is it what I'm thinking?

Official

AmericaDecides2020

FLORIDA is getting interesting. Look at Broward county (democrat-leaning county), they turned out bigger than they did for Hillary. Biden is over performing while Trump is under performing so far.

Winning or losing lies in these little details.

busky007:

Official

AmericaDecides2020

Oga , dont you know the meaning of "projection" ? That is what is expected based on past antecedents. Votes are still coming in from various counties.

.

busky007:

Official

AmericaDecides2020

11 votes

kelvindj98:
Trump is leading in Florida. But mostly Republican counties have been counted and his lead margin is smaller than in 2016. Biden is also leading in a county Trump won in 2016 with 75% on that county's vote counted. Hmmm, is it what I'm thinking?

22% of the votes counted and Biden ahead by 0.3

It's gonna be so close

MT:
FLORIDA is getting interesting. Look at Broward county (democrat-leaning county), they turned out bigger than they did for Hillary. Biden is over performing while Trump is under performing so far.

Winning or losing lies in these little details.

Yeah, I predict a Biden win with what I'm seeing. Trump is underperforming in every county in Florida, even the red ones he is winning.

SEYIKP:
Biden wins Virginia

Not officially.it hasn't been tabulated

kelvindj98:

Yeah, I predict a Biden win with what I'm seeing. Trump is underperforming in every county in Florida, even the red ones he is winning.

If he loses there,he is gone

Yonce:


22% of the votes counted and Biden ahead by 0.3

It's gonna be so close

Biden is clearly going to win the popular vote. The question is if he'll also win the electoral college. I hope he does.

Dansuqi:


If he loses there,he is gone

Completely gone. He needs Florida more than ever.

busky007:

Official

AmericaDecides2020

Not surprising.

It is early days...I repeat...early days BUT this election might end quicker than we imagine. If Florida or Georgia flips blue, it is over.

Biden leading in florida

MT:
It is early days...I repeat...early days BUT this election might end quicker than we imagine. If Florida or Georgia flips blue, it is over.

Trump is leading in virginia

He don happen

binghammer:

Biden is clearly going to win the popular vote. The question is if he'll also win the electoral college. I hope he does.

I know.
But I'm saying whoever wins Florida will win it by a very small margin.