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00:00The U.S. presidential election is a nationwide vote,
00:04but each time, the race comes down to a handful of states
00:07that truly decide the winner,
00:09known as swing states or battleground states.
00:12Why is this?
00:14It's all thanks to a unique process called the Electoral College.
00:18Here's how it works.
00:19The U.S. is made up of 50 states,
00:21and each holds its own contest for president.
00:24The winner of each state earns that state's electoral votes,
00:28with a number based on population.
00:31The number of electors that each state gets
00:33is directly related to their representation in Congress.
00:37So Wyoming has one member of the House of Representatives
00:40and two senators.
00:42That means that they've got three Electoral College votes.
00:44By contrast, California, which is very populous,
00:46has 52 representatives and then two senators,
00:49so they have 54 Electoral College votes.
00:51In total, the Electoral College consists of 538 electors,
00:56so a majority of 270 electoral votes
00:59is required to win the presidency.
01:02In 2024, some states are nearly certain
01:04to choose the Republican candidate,
01:06such as Texas and Florida.
01:09Others predictably vote for the Democratic candidate,
01:12like California and New York.
01:14The states that remain, those are the swing states,
01:18the ones where the race is so competitive
01:20their electors could potentially be won by either candidate.
01:24It's voters in these states that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris
01:28have focused their time and money on trying to win over.
01:31We win Pennsylvania.
01:33We win this great commonwealth.
01:35We are going to win the whole ballgame.
01:37It's such an important place.
01:39And so Wisconsin, today I ask you,
01:42are you ready to make your voices heard?
01:45The states considered battlegrounds change each election.
01:49Usually it's one, two, maybe three states.
01:52This year, there are seven states
01:54where either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris could win.
01:57Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
02:02North Carolina, and Georgia.
02:05The Electoral College system also means
02:07it's entirely possible to win the most votes nationally
02:11but still lose the presidential election.
02:14This happened in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote,
02:18but Donald Trump won the Electoral College,
02:20and therefore, the presidency.
02:22The Electoral College has come under attack
02:24by groups who will point to the fact that
02:26Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016,
02:31that Al Gore won the popular vote in the year 2000,
02:33and yet the Electoral College biased the outcomes
02:35in favor of the Republican.
02:37Now, this is not built into the system to favor Republicans.
02:40It just so happened that the Electoral College in those times did.
02:43Supporters of the Electoral College say
02:45it forces candidates to campaign across a range of states
02:49instead of only focusing on big urban areas.
02:52And like it or not, this has been the process in the U.S. since 1787,
02:58and it plays a deciding role in who gets to sit in the White House.