The United States has a unique system for electing a president: the Electoral College. In modern times, that has put enormous influence in the hands of a few states that are almost evenly divided politically.
That forces campaigns to dedicate most of their money to those states. This year there are seven: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The lack of attention to other states leaves voters in much of the country feeling like they and the issues they care about are being ignored during the presidential race.
What is the Electoral College?
American voters do not elect their president directly through the popular vote, that is, the absolute number of national votes received by each candidate. When they vote, they technically do so for a list of delegates who will vote for the president and vice president on a specific day in December.
Almost all states have laws that require electors to vote for the winner of their state’s popular vote, but that does not mean that the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in the Electoral College is the one who received the most votes in the elections. urns.
In two of the last six US presidential elections, candidates have lost the national popular vote but won the presidency. This includes former President Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by nearly 2.9 million but still won enough Electoral College votes to become president.
This often seems crazy to people who live in democracies around the world. The United States is the only country that has a system in which voters elect a body of delegates with the sole function of electing the president. In most other democracies, the president is elected directly by the popular will of the voters.
Each state’s presidential delegates are equal to the number of its representatives in the United States House of Representatives and Senate. This benefits smaller states and sets the stage for presidential elections to largely depend on a handful of swing states.
A presidential candidate must obtain a majority of the 538 total collegiate votes to win (the District of Columbia gets three). Most states use a system in which all electors give their votes to the popular winner of the state. The exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, which award their votes proportionally.
Where is the presidential campaign headed?
The Electoral College incentivizes presidential campaigns to focus visits and spending on a small number of swing states.
This year, the battleground states represent 18% of the country’s population, but they have captured the attention of Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and their running mates.
As of Tuesday, the Democratic and Republican candidates had made just over 200 campaign stops, three-quarters of them in the seven most contested states, according to a database of campaign rallies compiled from information from The Associated Press. Pennsylvania has received 41 visits, the most of any state. AP data indicates that Michigan is in second place, with 31 visits as of Tuesday, closely followed by Wisconsin, with 27. The rest have, respectively: North Carolina, 18 visits; Nevada, 13 visits; Arizona and Georgia 12 visits each.
But it’s not just about state visits: presidential campaigns are tailoring their activities to specific counties they consider crucial to their success. The AP database shows that his campaign events in those seven states have been concentrated in counties with 22.7 million registered voters, just 10% of all registered voters nationally for this year’s presidential election.
Waukegan, one of the many forgotten places
The lack of attention from the presidential candidates is acutely felt in places like Waukegan, Illinois, a largely Latino working-class city that has suffered the consequences of the closure of its factories and the deterioration of its docks. Except for occasional fundraisers in Chicago, presidential candidates bypass Illinois, which votes overwhelmingly Democratic.
Its neighbor to the north, Wisconsin, is a frequent stop for presidential hopefuls.
The last time a presidential candidate set foot in Waukegan was when former President Donald Trump landed at its airport in 2020. He stepped off Air Force One, waved in the air, and immediately got into an SUV heading across the border: to Kenosha, Wisconsin.
But in Racine, a similarly sized Wisconsin city just 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Waukegan, Trump held a rally in June near a harbor overlooking Lake Michigan, where he praised the development at along the lakefront, spoke about efforts to revitalize Racine and the greater Milwaukee area, and highlighted the importance of his constituents in his bid to return to the White House. Just the month before, before dropping out of the race, President Joe Biden had praised a new Microsoft center in Racine County during a campaign stop in the city.
Waukegan residents say they feel lost in the national conversation surrounding the presidential election and wish they could be on the candidates’ radar, too.
“It’s not so much about the candidates as it is about the undemocratic Electoral College,” said Matt Muchowkshi, president of the Waukegan Township Democrats. “It’s frustrating that the votes of certain voters count more, and they discount and discredit the votes of more urban voters and more people of color.”
