Kid’s Guide to the Electoral College
In the United States, there are 538 electoral college votes that decide who becomes the president irrespective of the popular votes. For example, Hillary Clinton won the popular votes in 2016 by 3 million votes, but Trump had more electoral college votes and became the president.
Are you with me so far?
Electoral college votes allocated to each state is different. For example, California has 55 votes, New York, 29 and Nevada 6.
Fortunately, the candidate who wins the popular votes of a state also wins all the electoral college votes. Even though this is not mandated by law. For example, President Trump won 51% of the popular votes of Florida and so was given all its 29 electoral college votes. You need 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.
Let’s give an example with Nigeria.
Let’s say Kano, Katsina and Kebbi states all have 15 electoral college votes each. If Buhari wins Kano and loses both Katsina and Kebbi to Atiku, he would have lost the election because he would have only 15 electoral college votes while Atiku would have 30 – even though his 6 million popular votes from Kano alone are more than the 3 million Atiku got in both states combined.
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