The presidential race is the one political competition in America where being the most popular isn't necessarily the goal.Polls taken over the last few weeks show the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore to be a dead heat.
Depending on who you listen to, either one could receive 1 or 2 percent more votes than the other.
But winning the popular vote isn't how a person gets elected president.
The president is eventually determined by the vote of the Electoral College.
If you harken back to your civics classes, you probably remember that each state has a designated number of votes that corresponds with the number of representatives sent to Congress.
Whichever presidential candidate carries a state gets that state's electoral votes.
So, a candidate could win the popular vote (that is, the votes cast by folks like you and me) and still lose the election.
It's happened a couple of times and nearly happened as recently as the Kennedy-Nixon race of 1960.
An internet site -- Hotline, which is a destination point for political junkies, -- keeps a running tabulation of the polls conducted in each state and figures the results of the electoral vote based on those polls.
How do things stand so far? Gore leads Bush 281-227. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win.
According to Hotline, Bush would win 26 states but lose the election.
He could win the popular vote and lose the election.
Does one vote count? In Illinois, where Gore leads the polls but barely ahead of the margin of error, every vote counts.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий