Ignore the media polls and learn to count to 270

By Scott Shuey

Business Editor

As anyone who has had to work around me over the past few weeks can tell you, I hate nation-wide polls in the US presidential election.

The media likes them because they make for simple, attention grabbing headlines such as “Trump climbs ahead of Clinton by two-points.” Here in the Middle East, they’re a good way of providing readers a simple way of understanding the United States’ complex election process, but even in the US, people pay serious attention to these polls. That Trump headline I just mentioned, it caused stock markets to drop for almost 24 hours last week.

But the reason I hate these polls is because I end up having to explain to people why they’re often meaningless. First, at best and if they’re done correctly, they can tell you who will get the most votes. Why is that a problem? Ask Al Gore. In the 2000 election against George Bush, Gore won the popular vote but Bush got the job. Over the past 200 years, four presidents have succeed in convincing the majority of Americans to vote for them, only to be forced to watch another man take the oath of office.

The issue here is that when it comes to election time, the United States is less about being ‘United’ and is more about the ‘States’. One of the hardest things to explain about the US presidential election is that literally no one casts a direct vote for the person they want to be president on Election Day. What American’s will actually do on November 8 is tell their state which person it should for vote on December 19.

This is all that part of that thing called the Electoral College you’ve been hearing about. If you feel confused when reading about it, don’t worry, you’re in good company. The basic rule is this: the states with the biggest populations get the most say in who becomes president. California, which has the largest population, will get to cast the most votes (55) on December 19. Places like Alaska, where the Caribou outnumber voters by 4 to 1, have the least say (3). The first candidate to get a simple majority (270) wins.

For the record, by the time mid-December rolls around, the Electoral College vote is almost always a foregone conclusion, but it’s also why, come election night, everyone in the US will be focusing on Florida and North Carolina. These are the leading “battleground” states everyone is talking about. They don’t have the influence of California or Texas, but they have enough to tip the election is one direction or other. Despite their large populations, California and Texas are usually ignored by candidates. Trump has a 0.1 per cent chance of taking perpetually liberal California, while Clinton currently has a 4 per cent chance in gun-loving Texas.

So the next time one of the major US media machines tried to convince you about the latest polls showing one candidate or the other leading nationally, ignore them. If you really want to know how your favourite candidate is doing, check out the state polls. Or better yet, just go to sites like fivethirtyeight.com or 270towin.com. These sites are looking at state-by-state polling and are focused on the real fight — the race to 270.