VOA常速英语:特朗普和拜登的选举人团之争

From afar, a US presidential election probably looks like a nationwide referendum on a couple of candidates, but actually it is an aggregation of elections held in each of the 50 states. The more populous the state, the more votes it has in what is called the electoral college. Seven states have the fewest number of electoral votes, three. One for the state's member of the U.S. House of Representatives and two for the state's U.S Senators. The district of Columbia gets the minimum three as well. California, Texas, New York and Florida have the most electoral votes. The popular vote winner in each state typically gets all of the state's electoral votes. The objective - win enough states to reach 270 electoral votes - a simple majority of the 538 electoral votes available. In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes, but Republican Donald Trump won the electoral college by more than 270 electoral votes, flipping six states that voted democrat in 2012, winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by fewer than 80,000 votes, that’s where the 2020 political battle ground starts.

Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan are all states that are have been pretty competitive in recent years. They're all states that voted for Barack Obama twice. North Carolina only voted for Obama once in 2008, and Arizona hasn't voted a democratic president since uh since the 90s, and but what you're seeing in states like Arizona, North Carolina is, that this kind of revolt against Trump amongst white college-educated suburbanites is helping to make those states more competitive, and so those are kind of the six states that most people feel like you're gonna decide the election. Kyle Kondik is managing editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the university of Virginia center for politics. He is skeptical of polls suggesting a possible landslide victory for democrat Joe Biden. We've had very close to competitive presidential elections in the United States this century, except arguably for for Barack Obamas seven point national victory in 2008, but the other four elections were pretty close, and so this is why I'm sort of skeptical, that these polls showing biden with this kind of bloated national lead, are ultimately going to reflect reality come election day, like I do think biden could end up winning decisively, but I struggle with a double-digit margin just because that's something we haven't seen in a while. Election day is months away giving president trump plenty of time to boost his poll numbers, if he claws back some of his support, if he cuts it fine lead. We know in 2016 he was able to win the election without winning the national popular vote, so if the national polls are, you know, a buying lead of, you know, say three to five points or something on election day. I think there's probably going to be some genuine dramas who's gonna win. Steve Reddish VOA news washington