KEY POINTS
- Democratic nominee Joe Biden leads president Trump in all polls so far
- Popular vote is not important in determining who becomes president, electoral collage is key
- Biden only needs to win in three key states to beat Trump
As Americans go to the polls today November 3rd to determine their next president, all eyes are on three states which will determine if Biden will be the next US President or whether Trump will have another four years at the White House.
US election does not operate on the winner-takes-all system like other democracies, for instance in 2016 presidential election Hillary Clinton defeated Trump with nearly 3 million more popular votes but Trump went on to be president anyway because he won the electoral college.
In the Electoral College system, each US state gets a certain number of electors based on its total number of representatives in Congress. Each elector casts one electoral vote following the general election; there are a total of 538 electoral votes. The candidate that gets more than half (270) wins the election.
There is no doubt that democratic nominee Joe Biden is going to get more popular votes that Trump, but if he fails to repeat his win on electoral college votes then a repeat of 2016 could happen.
The polls have Joe Biden beating Trump in electoral college votes, If voting continues apace the democratic nominee already has more than the 270 electoral votes that he needs.
Biden’s clearest path to election victory is to win back the three states which Trump flipped to trounce of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The three states are Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have always carried by Democrats for decades before 2016 when Trump did the impossible against all odds.
If Biden carries these three states (polls shows he is leading Trump in these states), the doesn’t even need to win any other states Trump won in 2016 because he will already have the 270 electoral votes needed to be president.
