Electoral Votes per State 2016
California | 55 |
Texas | 38 |
Florida | 29 |
New York | 29 |
Pennsylvania | 20 |
Illinois | 20 |
Ohio | 18 |
Georgia | 16 |
North Carolina | 15 |
Michigan | 16 |
New Jersey | 14 |
Virginia | 13 |
Washington | 12 |
Arizona | 11 |
Massachusetts | 11 |
Tennessee | 11 |
Indiana | 11 |
Missouri | 10 |
Maryland | 10 |
Wisconsin | 10 |
Colorado | 9 |
Minnesota | 10 |
South Carolina | 9 |
Alabama | 9 |
Louisiana | 8 |
Kentucky | 8 |
Oregon | 7 |
Oklahoma | 7 |
Connecticut | 7 |
Utah | 6 |
Iowa | 6 |
Nevada | 6 |
Arkansas | 6 |
Mississippi | 6 |
Kansas | 6 |
New Mexico | 5 |
Nebraska | 5 |
Idaho | 4 |
West Virginia | 5 |
Hawaii | 4 |
New Hampshire | 4 |
Maine | 4 |
Montana | 3 |
Rhode Island | 4 |
Delaware | 3 |
South Dakota | 3 |
North Dakota | 3 |
Alaska | 3 |
District of Columbia | 3 |
Vermont | 3 |
Wyoming | 3 |
The Electoral College System
Since the dawn of our country, the U.S. President has been elected by the electoral college system. It was a compromise between 1 vote per state which would give the same weight to a sparcely populated state as to a heavily populated state and a system based solely on population. As it turned out, about 80% of the electoral vote is determined by the number of representatives a state has (mostly based on population although every state is guaranteed at least 1) and about 20% is determined by allocation because each state gets 2 electoral votes based on the number of U.S. senators per state.