When it comes to the election of a president, you'd think that they would gather the votes from all the people in the US, but that is not how it works. The different states are defined as real states. The people vote in the state they live in and the presidential candidate with the most votes wins the votes from that state. The number of electors from each state is equal to its total representation in Congress. Each state has two senators and congressmen. The states are divided into districts and the numbers of congressmen represent the number of districts in that particular state. It is like this to make sure that a state with a small number of inhabitants does not have the same influence than a bigger state. But the result doesn't always represent the majority of the US. That is because small states are overrepresented compared to the number of inhabitants in the bigger states.
The electors from each state are voting on the same candidate and that represent the majority of the people in the state they are representing. This can be compared to "the winner takes it all" that we talked about in British politics. It is like this because in 1787 when the system was made up they couldn’t gather all votes from all of America because it is such a big country. The people from each state would send a person they relied on to represent them and their votes. There are other tracks from the history in the way of voting. For example they are waiting 41 days to formally declare the winner. The 41 days gave them time to assemble, discuss the candidate and send their decision to Washington DC.
The big states are very important to the candidates because they have a bigger amount of electors. In the US there are 435 congressmen, 100 senators and 3 electors from the District of Columbia. That means there are 538 electoral votes and a candidate has to get over a half of these. The magic number of votes is 270. In 2008 Barack Obama was the first African American to be an American president. He won the election with 365 electoral votes and 52,9 % of the popular vote.
Very interesting post, although I would like to point out a few things.
SvarSlettIn the first paragraph, you claim that cities are overrepresented in comparison to the number of inhabitants of larger states. This needs a source, and should also be elaborated. They are probably aware of this, which indicates that there's also a reason why they haven't changed it. In Norway both inhabitants and square kilometers count for the number of seats, which means that one vote from Oslo is worth less than one from Finnmark. But, of course, there's a reason why they made it that way.
And the 538 electoral votes, where the president has to get half, only applies to elections. Obama currently needs a majority in Congress, but 60% in the Senate to pass laws. The 60% are to stop the arguments; with less the opposition can just keep debating until he gives up.
Your blog is quite nice, keep up the good work :)