How many Electoral College votes does your state have for the 2024 election? This map will show you.
CBSN
A record number of Americans have voted early in the 2024 presidential election, and many millions more are expected to cast their ballots before the polls close in each state on Election Day. But as we're reminded every four years, it's not the popular vote that decides who wins the presidency — it's the outcome of the Electoral College.
There are 538 votes in the Electoral College and it takes a majority — 270 — to win. In most states, it's a winner-take-all system — whichever candidate comes out ahead, no matter how slim the margin, gets all of the state's Electoral College votes. Only two states, Maine and Nebraska, allow their electoral votes to be split.
The race between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will likely come down to a handful of battleground states where voters are closely divided. Of those, Pennsylvania has the most electoral votes at stake, with 19, followed by North Carolina and Georgia with 16 each, Michigan with 15, Arizona with 11, Wisconsin with 10, and Nevada with 6.
Five presidents in U.S. history have won the presidency without winning the popular vote, and the most recent to do so was Donald Trump in 2016. His opponent that year, Hillary Clinton, won over 2.8 million more votes than Trump nationwide, but she lost enough key states to be defeated in the Electoral College, 306 to 232.
We've all seen a lot of political ads lately. But in battleground states, it's a tsunami. Jack Levis is an independent voter in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which makes him one of the most desirable voters on the planet: "Emails, texts, phone calls, it's in my news feed, it's in social media. In the last two days, I counted, I had 30 spam emails in there all about the election," he said. "It's unbelievable."