What is the electoral college and how does it work?

The voting system in the US has seen candidates win the popular vote but fail to secure an election victory.

This combination of photos shows Vice President Kamala Harris, left, on Aug. 7, 2024, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump on July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Kamala Harris, left, and Donald Trump are within two points of another another, according to polling averages. (AP)

Donald Trump set alarm bells ringing after declaring that he has a "little secret" with House speaker Mike Johnson that he says will help him secure an election victory.

Speaking at a rally on 26 October, Trump said: “We can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House. Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a little secret – we will tell you what it is when the race is over.”

His comments prompted speculation from some commentators, including the respected Politico US outlet, that the former president might attempt to use an old congressional move to decide the election outcome in his favour.

“He made some potentially more sinister comments that could be a reference to the House settling a contested election," Politico's Playbook said.

The "House" refers to the House of Representatives – one of two US legislative chambers along with the Senate.

The House could “settle” an election if neither candidate manages to secure the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the election. In this case, a "contingent election" sees delegates from each state in the House and Senate cast a vote for their preferred candidate.

The key difference here is that each state gets the same number of votes (as opposed to the electoral college, which gives states a vote based on their size and population) – this would likely mean a bump for Trump, as more states lean Republican.

In response to the claims, Johnson branded the theory “absolute, utter nonsense”, insisting the Republicans are “going to respect the law”.

And despite Kamala Harris and Trump being neck and neck in the polls, such a scenario is highly unlikely and it is expected that the election will be decided by the electoral college system.

Confused? Read on to find out how the electoral college system works...

The electoral college is a process by which the president and vice president are elected. As outlined by the US constitution, the highest offices in the country are chosen using electors – currently there are 538, with 270 needed to secure a victory.

Each state has a certain number of electors, determined by how many members of Congress (politicians sitting in the US House and Senate) it has – which in turn is determined by the state's geography and population.

This means some large states with a big population, such as California, have far more electoral votes than smaller states with fewer voters, such as Wyoming.

Electoral votes allocated to each state for United States presidential elections
Electoral votes allocated to each state for United States presidential elections

In most states, there is a winner-takes-all process by which the candidate with the most votes in the state takes all of the electoral votes. In California, for example, the winning candidate would take all 55 electoral votes – almost a fifth of the 270 needed to win the election.

However, in Maine and Nebraska, electoral college votes are split between the statewide winner as well as the winner of each district in what many believe is a more representative process.

Once all of the votes have been won in the 5 November election and a victor announced, the members of the electoral college meet in their states and cast their votes in mid-December, with their votes officially counted and ratified in the Capitol on January 6 at a joint session of Congress.

The president is the inaugurated on January 20.

The system – established by the Constitutional Convention in 1787 as a compromise between delegates who thought the president should be selected by a nationwide popular vote and those who believed Congress should pick the president – is not popular with US citizens.

Polls show that a majority would prefer to scrap the electoral college system in favour of a nationwide popular vote. A recent survey by Pew Research showed that six-in-10 Americans (63%) disliked the electoral college system, while just 35% were in favour of retaining it.

One of the key criticisms of the system is that a candidate can win the popular vote (eg they have a majority of the votes cast) but not win the electoral college votes, which has happened twice in recent years.

** FILE ** Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. George W. Bush, left, speaks as Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Al Gore watches during their debate at Washington University in this St. Louis file photo from Oct. 17, 2000. This fall's presidential debates will pit George Bush's folksy manner and big-picture brand of policymaking against John Kerry's more cerebral outlook and nuanced world view. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke/File)
George W. Bush, left, beat Al Gore in the 2000 election despite the latter gaining more votes. (AP)

In the 2000 election, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote – securing 543,895 more votes than his Republican rival George W. Bush. However, Bush won the electoral college vote thanks to how those individual votes were distributed across the states – handing Bush the victory and the presidency.

Hillary Clinton is the most recent candidate to have secured the popular vote, beating then rival Trump by more than 2.9 million votes – the most votes of any US candidate in history. However, Trump secured the electoral college, and the win – underlining many US citizens' concerns about the system.

Another concern about the electoral college is the potential issue if so-called 'faithless electors', who could in theory cast their electoral vote for a different candidate than the one who has won. However, there have been just seven faithless electors in US history (the most recent in 1988), so while this is a possibility, it rarely causes practical problems.