how can the president and vice-president receive fewer than 270 electoral votes?
In what situation can the president and vice president receive fewer than 270 electoral votes. How is this possible?
How might a presidential candidate win more votes than another one and still not get a majority of votes in the Electoral College?
There could be a 269-269 tie in the electoral college vote. It is possible. In fact, during this last general election, there was speculation that it might happen based on some potential electoral outcomes involving certain swing states.
At that point, there would be a plethora of legal challenges in the most closely contested states. But it would ultimately come down to the House of Representatives appointing the presidential winner.
In the United states voting system it is winner takes all. For example in texas (with a total of 34 electoral college votes) if you received 18 votes in texas and the other candidate received 16, you would be awarded all 34 college vote in total. in 2000 George Bush did not get the most amount of people vote for him however he still mainained presidency. this was done by winning the required 270 votes.
A candidate can receive less than half of the electoral college votes when there is a strong 3rd party candidate. Strom Thurmond had 39 in 1948 and George Wallace had 46 in 1968. In 1992 Ross Perot received 20 million votes. He didn’t get any electoral college votes but Clinton won the election with only 43% of the popular vote.
A candidate with a larger popular vote has lost the election a number of times because of the winner take all electoral college votes. It happens if he wins by a big margin in a few states but loses by a small margin in the others. In simplest terms he could win one state by millions of votes and lose all the others by only one vote each.
There could be more than one major candidate in November, and while it may not seem possible, it happened in 1860 and could have happened in 2008 if the Democrats had split between Clinton and Obama. (more probable than you think)