you may think the u.s election is over
and joe biden has secured the presidency
with 80 million votes
but there's still a significant step to
go on december 14th
and it all comes down to how the u.s
president is actually
elected when americans went to the polls
they weren't technically voting for
donald trump or joe biden
but for members of something called the
electoral college
the word college simply refers to a
group of people
or electors with a shared task to choose
the president of the united states
the system goes back more than 200 years
the founders of the united states wanted
to establish a democratic system
but were concerned that a direct popular
vote might lead to the election
of an unsuitable president electors were
settled on as a compromise
each state was given a number of
electors based roughly on the size of
its population
today there are 538 electors and the
successful presidential candidate will
need to get a majority of these
at least 270 in order to win
in most states the candidate who wins
the popular vote
gets the support of all of that state's
electors
for example whether a winning candidate
gets 99 or 51
of the vote in california they would
still receive all the state's
55 electoral college votes that's why
it's possible for a candidate to lose
the popular vote across the country
but still secure a majority of electoral
college votes
and become president that's what
happened in 2016
when trump secured the presidency
despite getting almost 3 million
fewer votes than his election rival two
out of the last six elections were won
by candidates who had fewer votes than
their rivals
although this hadn't happened for more
than 100 years before the 2000 election
what all this means is that campaigns
often focus on strategies that help
secure
the 270 electoral votes needed to win
they tend to target battleground or
swing states
rather than trying to turn out voters in
states which consistently vote for the
same party
in fact in the 2020 presidential
election 12 battleground states saw 96
percent of campaign events
33 states sun no events at all so
the 538 members of the electoral college
play a crucial role in how the president
of the united states is elected
over the years there have been efforts
to change the electoral college system
but proponents say it helps deliver
decisive results across a vast
country and everyone knows the rules of
the game
before election day
you