5.8 - Electing a President
Types of Elections
- General Election: the actual election where the winner takes office.
- Held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. In 2024, it was November 5.
- Primary Elections: earlier elections where parties choose their nominees, held state by state roughly January through June of the election year, with rules varying by state and party.
- Front-loading: states move their contests earlier to get more attention and influence. Iowa (caucus) and New Hampshire (primary) have traditionally gone first, and many states vote together on Super Tuesday in early March, so the race is often decided within a few weeks.
Nomination Systems
- Open Primaries: any registered voter can participate in either party's primary, but only one.
- Closed Primaries: only voters registered with that specific party can participate.
- Caucuses: in-person meetings where party members discuss and vote publicly for their preferred candidate.
- Caucuses take hours at a set time, so turnout is low and the people who show up tend to be the most committed partisans. Many states have switched from caucuses to primaries.
Delegates and the Convention
Winning a state awards a candidate a set number of delegates, who officially cast votes for that candidate at the national convention. A majority of delegates secures the nomination. The convention is where the party formally nominates its candidate and adopts its platform.
Today the nominee is almost always known before the convention, so conventions mostly unify the party, introduce the running mate, and grab media attention heading into the general election (often giving the nominee a short bump in the polls, called a convention bounce).
The Electoral College
- Winning the presidency requires a majority of electoral votes: 270 out of 538 total.
- Each state gets electoral votes equal to its representatives plus senators; D.C. gets 3. Since every state gets at least 3, small states are overrepresented relative to population.
- Winner-Take-All: 48 states award all their electoral votes to whoever wins the state, regardless of margin.
- The Constitution lets each state legislature decide how to choose its electors. Maine and Nebraska give 2 electoral votes to the statewide winner and 1 to the winner of each congressional district. In 2024, Harris won one of Nebraska's electoral votes and Trump won one of Maine's.
- Swing States: because of winner-take-all, candidates focus almost entirely on competitive states, largely ignoring states they're sure to win or lose.
- Contingent Election: if no one hits 270, the House decides, with each state delegation getting one vote.
- Process: electors formally cast votes about six weeks after the election; Congress counts them and declares a winner in early January.
- Undemocratic by design: a Framers' compromise reflecting distrust of pure democracy, embodying elite democracy through filtered representation, voters are technically choosing electors, not the president directly.
- Popular vote vs. electoral vote: because of winner-take-all, a candidate can win the Electoral College while losing the national popular vote. It happened in 2000 (George W. Bush beat Al Gore 271 to 266 in electoral votes while Gore won about half a million more popular votes) and in 2016 (Donald Trump won 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 227 while Clinton won nearly 2.9 million more popular votes). In 2024, Trump won both, 312 to 226 in electoral votes and 49.8% to 48.3% in the popular vote.
Arguments For and Against the Electoral College
In favor: preserves a role for states, ensures geographic balance so candidates can't ignore less populous areas, and guards against pure mob rule.
Against: gives outsized power to swing state voters, can override the popular vote, and the winner-take-all structure discourages third-party runs.
Changing the system would require a constitutional amendment, difficult since it currently benefits both small states and the two major parties.
One workaround is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact: member states agree to give all their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, but only once states with 270 electoral votes have joined. As of 2026, 18 states and D.C., with 222 electoral votes, have joined.
Incumbency Advantage
Sitting presidents tend to beat challengers thanks to campaigning experience, an existing donor network, an established "presidential" image, and the bully pulpit.
Incumbents can still lose when the economy is bad or voters are unhappy with the country's direction (retrospective voting): Jimmy Carter in 1980, George H.W. Bush in 1992, and Donald Trump in 2020 all lost reelection.
Big picture
Electing a president is a two-stage process: primaries and caucuses determine each party's nominee, then the Electoral College decides the general election through a winner-take-all system that concentrates campaigns on a handful of swing states. Critics call it undemocratic since it can override the popular vote, while defenders say it preserves state influence and geographic balance.