Explain Like I'm Five

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ELI5 How someone can get the majority of American's to vote for them by winning the popular vote but still lose the election? Kind of like Hillary did? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] kersploosh 13 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

In each state you only need >50% of the votes to win all the electoral points for that state. Once you have 50% of the votes in a state, additional votes within that state are essentially worthless. In Hillary's case her supporters were heavily clustered in a handful of states. She won California by a landslide, for example, but then went on to lose in a bunch of other states by narrow margins. If her supporters had been spread out among more states she would have easily won the overall election.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Maine and Nebraska allocate EC votes in a semi-proportional manner.