In a very close and exciting race, President Obama edged out the challenger Mitt Romney.
Congratulations, Mr. Obama!
On January 20, 2013, President Obama will be sworn into office for a second term as the 44th President of the United States of America.
President Obama is projected to have won the election with 303 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 203.
Wait, that doesn’t sound like an “edged out’ victory.
Read on to learn more about how U.S. Presidents are elected, why this really was a close race, and why each vote was so important.
As of this morning’s paper, the popular vote is pretty much tied. With some 78% of the votes reported, the candidates are tied 49% to 49%. Considering the total number of votes, which was an outstanding turnout, President Obama has a slight lead with 52,071,449 votes to Mr. Romney’s 51,734,702 votes.
Whew, now that looks like a close race, but it wasn’t on the electoral side. Why is that?
In the United States, the voters don’t directly elect the President. The voters select electors who are pledged to vote for one or the other of the candidates in the Electoral College. It is the vote of those electors in that college that actually elects the President.
In almost every state, the presidential candidate who wins a majority of the popular votes wins all the electoral votes for the state. The electors in the state then cast all their electoral votes for the candidate prevailing in that state, even if the candidate only won by one vote.
So, technically, if one candidate had just one more vote in each of the 50 U.S. states than his opponent, that candidate would win all the electoral votes, but only have 50 more popular votes. A landslide! Not really, a really close race, but still a clear winner.
There is another interesting quirk about the electoral system. There are a total of 538 electors, one for each Representative (435), one for each Senator (100) and three (3) for the District of Columbia. If you recall, only the Representatives are distributed by population. This means that some small states, like Rhode Island (4), have a disproportionate number of electoral votes for their size. This also means that some big states, like California (55), have many more votes because of their greater populations.
Let’s look at an example. Say Candidate #1 wins Rhode Island (4 electoral votes) and California (55 electoral votes) by one (1) popular vote in each state, Candidate #1 gets a bunch of electoral votes (59) for only two (2) more people voting in Candidate #1’s favor. Now, to continue our example, let’s say the opponent, Candidate #2, wins the electoral votes in Texas (34) and Illinois (21) by a total of 2,000,002 votes. Candidate #2 is 2,000,000 votes ahead in the popular vote versus Candidate #1, but Candidate #2 loses in electoral votes 59 to 55. This is why the winning margin in electoral votes can be out of whack with the popular vote. A candidate can win the popular vote and lose the election by losing in the Electoral College.
In an election, swing states are states with close races where a candidate can win all the electoral votes with just one or a few popular votes. In this election, Florida (29), Ohio (18), Virginia (13) and Wisconsin (10) were swing states where the election results were very close and could have swung either way. If Mitt Romney had won these states by one (1) vote each for a total of four (4) votes, he would have won an additional seventy (70) electoral votes, and he would have won the election with a total of 273 electoral votes. 270 electoral votes are required to win. Of course, it would have taken more than one vote in each of these states, but you can see how valuable a vote is.
Every vote is valuable. Never assume you did not make a difference. You did. Our example illustrates how just a few votes can change an election. Your vote changed this election. It changed you. Now, the candidates you elected have changes to make.
I enjoyed this headline in today’s paper: “Pulling People Together Won’t Be Easy.” Well said and well directed to the winning candidates. Now, their work really begins. In our democratic republic, pulling together to make things better is really what it is all about.
Congratulations again Mr. President and all the winning candidates.
We’re behind you, let’s get going,
Grandpa Jim