Electoral College Map

A state's electors equal its total congressional delegation: one for each member of the House of Representatives plus two for its senators. That gives every state a minimum of three, no matter how small its population, and it is why Wyoming has three electors while California has 54. The District of Columbia was given three by the Twenty-third Amendment in 1961 and first voted in 1964. House seats are reapportioned after each census, so the map is redrawn every ten years.

Yes, and it has happened five times — in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. Because almost every state awards all of its electors to whoever finishes first there, a narrow win in a large state counts for as much as a landslide in one. Margins run up in safe states add to the national popular vote without adding a single elector.

Both use the congressional district method instead of winner-take-all. Two electors go to the statewide winner and one to the winner of each congressional district, so the state's votes can be divided. Maine adopted this in 1972 and Nebraska in 1992, though neither actually split until Nebraska did in 2008 and Maine in 2016.

The election goes to the House of Representatives, which chooses the president in a contingent election. Crucially, the House votes by state delegation rather than by member, so each state casts a single vote and a candidate needs 26 to win. The Senate separately chooses the vice president. This has decided a presidential election twice, in 1800 and 1824.

An elector who votes for someone other than the candidate they were pledged to. They appear more often than people expect — one in 1968, 1972, 1976, 1988 and 2004, and seven in 2016. None has ever changed an outcome, and many states have since passed laws binding their electors. The maps and tables on this site show the votes as actually cast, so these appear in the totals.