American Politics Today - Essentials (3rd Ed)

HOW DO AMERICAN ELECTIONS WORK?| 199

almost always vote for the presidential candidate they have pledged to support.
After the votes are certifi ed by a joint session of Congress, the candidate who wins
a majority of the nation’s electoral votes (at least 270) is the new president. If no
candidate receives a majority of the electoral college votes, the members of the
House of Representatives choose the winner. They follow a procedure in which the
members from each state decide which candidate to support and then cast one col-
lective vote per state, with the winner needing a majority of these state-level votes
to win. This procedure has not been used since 1824, although it might be required
if a third-party candidate wins a signifi cant number of electoral votes or if a state’s
electors refuse to cast their votes.^12
A presidential candidate can win the electoral college vote, and thus the election,
without receiving a majority of the votes cast by citizens. When a third-party can-
didate for president receives a substantial number of votes, the winner can easily
end up receiving more votes than any other candidate without winning a majority of
the popular vote. Bill Clinton won a substantial electoral college majority in 1992,
while receiving only 43 percent of the popular vote. This was due to the fact that Ross
Perot, a third-party candidate, received almost 19 percent of the national popular vote
but not enough support in any one state to win electoral votes. In 2012, Barack Obama
won about 50 percent of the popular vote, but nearly 62 percent of the electoral votes.
It is also possible for a candidate who loses the popular vote to receive the majority of
electoral votes and win the election. George W. Bush, the winner of the 2000 election,
received about 540,000 fewer popular votes than his main rival, Al Gore.

NUTS & bolts

7. 2

As discussed in the text, presidential campaigns focus on states with high electoral votes and swing
states, those where each candidate has a good chance of winning. In this box, we group states based
on these two variables, dividing them into three categories based on their number of electoral votes,
and on whether one party always won the state in the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections.

One Party Dominates in Recent Elections

Yes No

Electoral Votes
(2012 Election)

3–5 D.C., Delaware, Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota,

Vermont, Wyoming, Hawaii, Maine,

Rhode Island, Idaho, Nebraska,

West Virginia

New Hampshire,

New Mexico

6–10 Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Connecticut, Oregon, Oklahoma,

Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama,

South Carolina, Wisconsin,

Maryland, Missouri

Mississippi, Iowa, Nevada,

Colorado, Minnesota

More than 10 Massachusetts, Arizona, Tennessee,

Washington, New Jersey, Michigan,

Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New

York, Texas, California

Indiana, Virginia, North

Carolina, Ohio, Florida

ELECTORAL VOTES AND SWING STATES