The campaign for the presidency focuses more heavily on some states than on others because the U.S. Constitution prescribes the use of an Electoral College instead of a direct popular vote. This article explains how that system works, and the subsequent commentary by Charlie Cook looks at the numbers in this year's election. Cook is the editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report.

On Election Day, when American voters mark their ballots for their favorite presidential candidate, they are, in actuality, voting for a group of state electors. These electors are pledged to vote for that candidate in the Electoral College, the body of representatives that really elects the president and vice president.

Set up in the early days of the republic, the Electoral College currently has 538 members. Each state is represented by electors in equal number to the number of senators and representatives that represent that state in Congress. The District of Columbia, which has no voting representation in Congress, nevertheless has three electoral votes. The candidate who wins the presidency is the one who receives an absolute majority (at least 270) of the electoral votes.

Under this electoral system, it is possible to win the presidency without winning the popular vote. This happened most recently in 2000, but it has also happened three other times in the history of the United States. This anomaly occurs because nearly all the states use a "winner-take-all" system so that whichever candidate wins the popular vote in that state gets all its electors in the Electoral College. The only exceptions are the states of Maine and Nebraska, where two electors are chosen by statewide popular vote and the remainder by the popular vote within each congressional district.

Consequently, political parties must consider each state to be a separate race, keeping in mind that it is not the national total of votes that counts; it's how many electoral votes a candidate receives that will determine who goes to the White House. Candidates must run both a national campaign in which their messages are carried by the country's mass media, but they must also run more targeted state races that address local and regional issues and concerns.

Many states, by virtue of their demographics or economic profile, will predictably favor a certain candidate or party. In recent years, there has been a wide discussion of so-called red and blue states, states that have tended to vote in majority for Republicans (red) or Democrats (blue). The maps illustrating these distinctions show most blue states along the coasts and most red states in the south and center of the country. Those states that are too hard to predict—known as battleground or swing states—tend to be the focus of many of the resources of both campaigns.

Battleground states, where the candidates are currently running within a few percentage points of each other, can change from election to election or even during a single election season. The general agreement among experts is that in 2004 there are 10 battleground states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Together, these 10 states represent 116 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

Campaign strategists must calculate how much time and money a candidate needs to spend in any given state in order to have the best chance of winning. In 2004, President George Bush and Senator John Kerry have made numerous visits to battleground states like Pennsylvania and Ohio during the campaign. In addition to the presidential candidates themselves, their vice presidential running mates, family members, and other surrogates such as popular local politicians have made speeches on behalf of the campaigns in the various states.

In a close race, voter turnout is decisive, so both campaigns organize get-out-the-vote efforts to identify supporters and either get them to the polls on Election Day or encourage them to vote earlier by mailing in absentee ballots. Both parties also have active voter registration programs aimed especially at communities likely to favor their candidates.

If the United States had one big national election, with the popular vote winner elected president, the candidates would focus all of their campaign activities on the major cities, not mounting a truly national campaign, with smaller states completely ignored.

The Electoral College system was set up to create 51 (50 states plus the District of Columbia) separate contests, with the battleground states in this election as diverse as New Hampshire in the Northeast, New Mexico and Nevada in the Southwest and Florida in the Southeast (all three states with substantial Hispanic populations), and industrial states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, as well as more diverse states with large agricultural populations like Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

This system also forces candidates to engage in more "retail" campaigning, making appearances in fairly small cities and towns, something that would absolutely not be the case if it were one national election. This system takes the campaign out of being a purely television affair and forces an interaction with voters in smaller settings.

Current State of Play

There are currently 24 states, totaling 208 electoral votes, in the likely and solid columns for President George Bush. They are: Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arizona (10), Arkansas (6), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Missouri (11), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Carolina (15), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Virginia (13), Utah (5), and Wyoming (3).

There are 13 states either likely or certainly going to Senator John Kerry, with a total of 179 electoral votes. They are: California (55), Connecticut (7), the District of Columbia (3), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), New Jersey (15), New York (31), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (11).

There are currently three states that lean toward Kerry and have a total of 28 electoral votes: Maine (4), Michigan (17), and Oregon (7).

Of the 50 states and the District of Columbia voting on November 2, there are currently 11 states, with 123 electoral votes, that are too close to call. They are: Colorado (9), Florida (27), Iowa (7), Minnesota (10), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Mexico (5), Ohio (20), Pennsylvania (21), West Virginia (5), and Wisconsin (10). A candidate must have a total of 270 votes to win the Electoral College and, thus, the election.

Going into the first debate, major polls showed Bush to be between three and eight points (most likely six points) ahead of Kerry nationwide, and an average of four points ahead in the closest states. Bush was ahead by very narrow margins in seven or eight of the states that are too close to call.

Following the first and second debates, new polls had the candidates in a statistical "dead heat," that is, neither had a clear lead over the other.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.