Confused by the jargon of the US Presidential election? Here’s a primer, prepared by reporters in the FT’s Washington bureau (emphasis FT Alphaville’s):
American voters do not directly elect their presidents, and a US general election is not so much a single poll as a collection of 50 simultaneous state-by-state votes.
The winner of the election night popular vote in each state is alloted a number of representatives, who go on to make up a 538-member electoral college. The candidate with a majority of this electoral college takes the
election.
States get different weightings in the electoral college based on the size of their populations. California, the US’s most populous state, has 55 votes: six small states, plus Washington DC, each have the minimum 3 votes.
The result is that each candidate is trying to cross a finish line of 270 electoral college votes, and each campaign targets the states that are most likely to get them across that line.
All states except Maine and Nebraska appoint the votes in their electoral college on a winner-takes-all basis. That means that although California has one of the largest populations of registered Republicans, the state is
rarely tightly fought because it is historically safely Democratic.
As a result, campaigning is concentrated in a few competitive swing states where the parties are closely matched, and particularly on the most populous swing states with the largest numbers of electoral college votes.
And here’s the ADD condensed version:
American voters do not directly elect their presidents. Instead, the winner of the popular vote in each state is alloted representatives to a 538-member electoral college. Whichever candidate gets 270 electoral college votes – a simply majority – wins the election. States are alloted electoral college votes according to their size, from 55 votes for California to three each for five small states and the District of Columbia.
Article Series - US Elections 08
- First blood to Obama
- "We are not sure if an election result has ever mattered so little to the markets."
- Why you should ignore exit polls
- Market talking heads: election means nada, redux
- Intrade odds favour Obama (shock)
- Pink Picks, White House edition
- Obama, the markets and the perils of presidential data mining
- Further reading, White House edition
- Presidential data mining, redux
- Gideon Rachman doesn't give a twit
- Dirty dirty exit poll data, round one
- McCain gets Kentucky and South Carolina, Obama claims Vermont
- Obama vs McCain - how the networks see it
- 270, 538, swing states, electoral college - what does it all mean?
- Obama wins Ohio, White House in sight
- As Obama sweeps Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Mexico...
- Electoral vote tally - Obama 207, McCain 129
- Barack Obama wins Virginia, California - and the White House