BF2S Forums How do the US presidential elections work?

The presidential candidates are the choice of their political party, really. If someone wants to run, they form election committees or something like that to assist them and then they get to run through the gauntlet of the primary race to win the party nomination for that particular party, where the Democrat vs. Republican race happens. The party will then back their candidate and try to create a package that they can "sell" to America. The vice-presidential candidate, for example, is usually chosen to balance the ticket and attract more votes by say, pairing a very liberal/conservative presidential candidate with a moderate VP.

The electoral college is a system that has been in place and recieved a lot of criticisim up to about the time it was made. Popular vote is not how presidential elections are decided, but rather with electoral votes. Each of the 50 states, in addition to areas like Washington, D.C., has a certain number of electoral votes that I believe is the same as number of representatives they have in the House of Representatives. Anway, most states have a winner-take-all system, in which the candidate who wins the most votes in the states wins all of that states electoral votes from certain people called electors who almost always vote the way the popular vote goes, though they don't have to. This is why the swing states that could go Democratic or Republican are important, and why Florida was so crucial in 2000. Some states (I believe only 2 though) have a different system in which each Congressional district is reviewed and can give their electoral vote either way, so the state is not a winner-take-all system but can split up the votes. The winning of electoral votes over popular votes is what made 2000 so highly debated, and in elections past similar to that, people have still wanted to get rid of the electoral college and go by popular vote or another system.

I don't know why you're watching the primary coverage though. So few people do in this country that a lot simply identify with either the political party outright or make a guess as to what the platform of the candidate is.

Last edited by DesertFox- (2007-12-29 08:27:55)

Whoever has the most electoral votes wins ... just like all the other elections in previous history.

CameronPoe wrote:

Whoever has the most hanging chads wins.

yay... Florida wins

It works like this: Candidate A gathers a lot of funds from various special interest groups and ends up having to return a lot of favors if elected.  Candidate B does the same thing, but with mostly groups that oppose the groups that funded Candidate A.  Both candidates vie for the public's favor through misinformation, rhetoric, and mudslinging.  Whoever is the best at lying wins the most popular votes, but the other candidate might still win the actual election if the people he/she wins are better divided along state lines -- which gives him/her more electoral votes.

Generally speaking, the candidate that appeals more to rednecks that live in the middle of nowhere has a better chance of winning than the one who appeals to inner city trash.

Those are the counties though, not congressional districts that actually matter when electoral vote is considered. Plus, look at all the dense versus sparsely populated areas.