Western political science professor breaks down U.S. Electoral College process

The U.S. presidential election is Nov. 5, when millions of Americans will cast their vote for the country’s next leader — whoever earns more votes though, may not end up in the Oval Office.

That’s because of the Electoral College, a long-standing group of electors responsible for choosing the U.S. president and vice president.

“Instead of calculating the popular vote and seeing who got the most votes, it’s done on a state-by-state basis,” said Matthew Lebo, a political science professor at Western University.

Every state has a certain number of electoral votes, which all add up to 538. Each state historically assigns all of its electoral votes to the candidate who wins that state. Whichever candidate gets 270 of those votes, or more, wins the presidency.

Lebo pointed out Donald Trump lost the national popular vote in each of the last two elections, but won the presidency over Hillary Clinton in 2016 because of the Electoral College.

“He’s been more efficient in terms of turning votes into Electoral College votes,” said Lebo.

Swing states will play an important role on election day.

“I could tell you who’s probably going to win 43 out of 50 states, but there are seven that are just total coin flips at this point,” said Lebo.

“The three key ones are probably Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Donald Trump won those three states in 2016, but Joe Biden won them back in 2020,” he added. “If Kamala Harris can win those three states this year, then that’s enough for her to win the presidency.”

The Electoral College has long been criticized as a mechanism for choosing the U.S president, because it forces campaigns to focus their messaging on a small number of states that could go either way, rather than campaign to the broader American public.

Any efforts to abolish the Electoral College likely face a difficult task in amending the Constitution. “Right now, it benefits the Republican Party,” said Lebo. “You have one party that sees it as an advantage, and they’re not going to go and change it.”

Some primarily Democrat-leaning states are trying to get around the Electoral College though, with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Those states include California, New York, and Colorado.

They’re trying to convince enough states to agree to cast all of their electoral votes for whichever candidate wins the national popular vote, instead of their individual state.

“If you get enough states whose total Electoral College votes added up to 270,” said Lebo, “then the Electoral College might become irrelevant.”

A total of 17 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the agreement, totalling 209 of the 270 necessary votes. It’s also currently under consideration in four more states with a total of 50 Electoral College votes.