Last night, Barack Obama was re-elected as President of the United States. He received 50% of the vote, while his opponent, Mitt Romney, received 48%. We call that the “popular vote.”
But presidents are not elected by the popular vote – they’re elected with electoral votes. If you look at the picture above, you can see how many electoral votes a candidate receives if he or she wins that state. Last night, for example, Obama got more popular votes in New York State, so he received 29 electoral votes.
There are 538 electoral votes in total, so the first candidate to reach 270 electoral votes is the winner. As you can see, they haven’t finished counting the votes in Florida, but it doesn’t matter – Obama already reached 270 last night.
Electoral votes are based on population – the more people a state has, the more electoral votes it has.
When candidates lose an election, they give a concession speech. Here is Romney’s from last night (to read it click here):
And here is Obama’s victory speech (to read it click here):
I watched that last night, I think the concession speech such a wonderful traditional virtues, when someone is defeated, he congratulates his political enemy and offers his support for the future, just like an arguement inside a famliy.