How does a president actually get elected?

Presidents are chosen by the Electoral College, comprising 538 electors: one for each of the 435 House seats, one for each of the 100 senators, and three for the District of Columbia under the Twenty-third Amendment. A majority of 270 is required to win. Because every state receives two electors regardless of size, small states have more electoral weight per resident than large ones. Forty-eight states and DC award all their electors to the statewide plurality winner, while Maine and Nebraska allocate by congressional district with two going to the statewide winner.

The winner-take-all structure produces the two consequences people argue about. It means the national popular vote does not determine the outcome, and five elections have gone to a candidate who lost it, most recently in 2000 and 2016. And it concentrates campaigning in a small number of competitive states, since additional votes in a state a candidate will win or lose comfortably have no effect on the electoral count, which is why the large majority of general election campaign events and advertising occur in a handful of states.

The procedural steps after election day matter more than they used to. Electors meet in their states in December and cast ballots, states transmit certificates to Congress, and Congress counts them in a joint session in January. The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 clarified that process substantially after the disputed 2020 count, specifying that the vice president's role is ministerial, raising the threshold to lodge objections, and narrowing the grounds for a state to submit alternate slates. Faithless electors, those voting contrary to their state's result, have occurred but the Supreme Court held in 2020 that states may bind and penalize them.