What Is US Electoral College. How Does It Work
By: EjazUlHaqBhat
Image: AFP
The US presidential election always takes place on the first Tuesday of November (this time, it's 5 November). The president is not chosen directly by the voters, but by the electoral college
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When Americans take part in November election, most of them will cast a vote for either Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump
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But those votes don't directly determine who wins. Instead of a national race, it's a state-by-state race
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The electoral college consists of 538 electors. A candidate needs a majority of 270 electoral votes to be elected president
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Each state has a number of electoral votes, roughly in line with the size of its population
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California has the most with 54, while some sparsely-populated states like Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota (and Washington DC) have the minimum of three
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Generally, states award all their electoral college votes to whoever wins the poll of ordinary voters in the state
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For example, if a candidate wins 50.1% of the vote in Texas, they are given all of the state's 40 electoral votes
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A candidate who wins a state by a landslide will still pick up the same number of electoral votes
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