How the electoral college determines who wins the U.S. presidency
Slave owners played a part in creating the process to prevent majority rule, expert says
The contentious presidential election between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump is going to come down to the wire, polls suggest.
In the end, the race won't come down to who wins the popular votes — but who secures 270 electoral college votes.
Here is a look at the electoral college and how it works.
What is the electoral college?
Not a physical college, the electoral college is a process for electing the U.S. president. It's different from that of other republics, where citizens vote directly for the president.
The college has determined the winner of every U.S. presidential election since George Washington.
There are 538 electors in the electoral college, divided among each state as well as the District of Columbia. Electors vote based on the results of the popular vote — the number of votes cast for each candidate by citizens — in their respective states or districts, with the winner of the popular vote getting all of the electoral votes for the state in most cases.
The only states that do things differently are Nebraska and Maine, where two electors vote based on the results of the state's popular vote, and the others are determined based on the popular results in each congressional district within the state.
Electors are allocated based on the number of representatives a state has in the U.S. House of Representatives, which is determined by population, plus the number of senators — two per state.
D.C., while not a state, is allocated three electors. Each presidential candidate has a slate of electors chosen by the candidate's party in each state. They are often elected state representatives, party leaders and activists.
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What are swing states?
A swing state is any state that could go to either the Democratic or Republican, compared to other states that are dependably blue or red year after year. Candidates fight hard to sway swing states because they come with crucial electoral votes.
Pennsylvania is among the biggest of the battleground prizes with 19 electoral votes. Georgia has 16, Michigan has 15, Arizona has 11 and Wisconsin has 10.
How does the process influence campaign strategy?
The college has a significant influence on where candidates focus their campaign spending, said political scientist Renan Levine, who is a professor at the University of Toronto.
There are policy implications associated with that, he added.
"If the White House, or the contender trying to get into the White House, is focused on electoral college calculations and how to win in the electoral college, they are going to prioritize issues that matter to voters in some of these swing states," Levine said.
As for what constitutes a competitive state, Levine said the balance between urban and rural areas is a strong determining factor. "Democrats win a lot of votes in metropolitan, urban and suburban areas. Republicans tend to win votes in small towns and rural areas," he said.
There are exceptions to the urban-rural split, Levine said, as well as other competitive states that may not get as much attention due to their relatively low number of electoral college votes.
Can a candidate win the popular vote but lose the election?
Yes. No matter the result of the popular vote, the candidate who earns 270 or more electoral college votes wins.
It happened in 2016, when Trump won a majority of electoral college votes despite falling short of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the popular vote by nearly three million. It also happened in 2000, when Democrat Al Gore defeated Republican George W. Bush in the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, but Bush secured enough electoral college votes to win the presidency (more on Gore's Florida challenge later).
Have there been calls to abolish the electoral college?
Yes. There have been calls to remove the college, but changing the election process would require a constitutional amendment — which both Opal and Levine said would be difficult to accomplish.
Congress tried to repair flaws that were exposed after the 2020 election, when Trump falsely claimed he won. Prosecutors have said he pressured state officials to try to overturn the result.
In 2022, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act to clarify that each state's governor or other official chosen by the state will certify the state's election results before they are delivered to Congress.
The new law also aims to prevent a repeat of the 1876 election deadlock when three states submitted "duelling slates of electors" — one slate certified by the state's lawmakers and a competing slate by a state official.
The law also set a mandatory deadline for certifying results, giving states 36 days after the 2024 election to complete recounts and litigation.
Do electors ever go rogue?
Generally, no. The electors' meeting is usually a rubber-stamping exercise confirming votes for the candidate who won electors' respective states.
In 2016, though, seven electors recorded their vote for someone other than the winner of their states popular vote — an usually high number.
Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia have laws, some of which include criminal penalties, to try to prevent "faithless" electors from voting for someone else, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Both Opal and Levine mentioned a way that the electoral college could be circumvented without abolishing it: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The proposal requires enough states to join in order to secure the 270 electors needed to win the presidency. Once that happens, those states' electors would vote for the candidate who wins the national popular vote instead of voting for the candidate who wins their state.
"Nothing in the Constitution says how the electors are supposed to vote," Opal said. "If you're an opponent of the electoral college as I am, it's a rather elegant solution to the problem."
Levine said the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would be easier to accomplish than passing a constitutional amendment. "This proposal will preserve the electoral college, but it will make the electoral college simply a way of awarding the plurality vote winner," he said.
"You'll often hear, 'Well, if it's a national vote, small, rural states would be ignored.' But they are ignored in the current system. It's these closely balanced purple states that get the attention," Levine said.
What if no candidate reaches 270?
One of the flaws of the electoral college is that the race could end in a 269-269 tie.
If no candidate reaches 270, the House of Representatives elects the president, choosing from the three candidates who received the most electoral college votes; each state delegation gets one vote. The Senate would elect the vice-president through each senator casting one vote for one of the remaining top two candidates. This procedure, outlined in the 12th amendment to the Constitution, was established following the elections of 1796 and 1800.
This situation has only happened once — in 1824, when the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams — since the 12th amendment was ratified. Prior to that, in 1800, the House elected Thomas Jefferson in a tie-breaking vote between Jefferson and running mate Aaron Burr.
Opal said the Constitution doesn't clearly state whether it's the newly elected Congress that votes, or the Congress that was sitting at the time of the election. The most probable scenario would see the new congress decide since they take office before the president, he said.
Is there a deadline for results to be confirmed?
The electors meet in their respective states, as well as in D.C., to cast their votes and send results to Congress on Dec. 17. The results are officially tallied by Congress on Jan. 6 — the riot at the U.S. Capitol in 2021 was an attempt to stop that process to keep Trump in power.
The candidate who wins this year will be sworn in on Jan. 20.
A candidate may challenge the results of a particular state according to its own laws and deadlines. Each state also has laws regarding recounts, including automatic recounts depending on margin of victory or requiring a petition from a candidate.
If approved, challenges could proceed through the courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. This was the case in 2000, when Democratic nominee Al Gore challenged the results in Florida. The Supreme Court's ruling ultimately allowed Republican candidate George W. Bush to secure the state's electoral votes and become president.
Why does the U.S. use the college system?
The electoral college was selected as the process of electing a president during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. The objective was to preserve the power of the independent states within a national government, said Jason Opal, chair of the history and classical studies department at McGill University in Montreal.
But the process also is linked to slavery, he said. Slave owners in southern states didn't want majority rule — particularly in states where enslaved people constituted the majority of the population — and a direct vote for president.
"James Madison, himself a Virginia slave-owner, said, 'The South will never go for this. They will never go for a national elected president. They will only accept something like an electoral college, which would filter the choice by the states,'" Opal said. "The electoral college, from its very inception, has put the states in between the people and the president. And that was for a variety of reasons.
"In the founding period, it was hard to imagine the American people as a single political entity. Very few people thought that way. And it's because slave owners didn't want there to be direct majority rule — and it's because a lot of Northerners as well didn't want direct majority rule.
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With files from CBC News, The Associated Press and Reuters
