Most Americans have no idea what the Electoral College is and how it works.
If That Guy won the election in 2020, his victory would likely have been rendered through the Electoral College, same as happened in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but still lost.
Here’s a gentle primer for the Electoral College, for those needing a refresher.
The Electoral College has 538 delegates, the people in this country that formally elect the president. Their total number represents the total number of senators (100, two per state), the total number of state representatives (435 currently), and three more electoral voters for the District of Columbia. When Americans vote for president, we’re actually voting for our state electors to go vote for president.
State parties appoint electors to cast electoral ballots about a month after the popular vote in November. In essence, it’s known as a ‘winner-take-all’ system, because the winner of the popular vote in each state gets all that state’s electoral votes (except for Maine and Nebraska, who award their electoral votes more proportionally).
It takes 270 electoral votes to win a presidential election.