The presidency is expected to be a close race. In fact, a new CNN poll showed president Obama and former Governor Romney in a dead heat. Governor Romney is scheduled to visit Ohio and Pennsylvania today. President Obama is planning to spend the day in Chicago. Now, as the votes are counted and the election results start coming in, both candidates are going to be keeping a close eye on the electoral college count. That is the big prize today. Tom Foreman explains why and how this works. 

 

The electoral college in its essence is basically a compromise, a compromise between having Congress select all of our president, which Congress once did, and letting us by popular vote select our president. The electoral college is what actually elects a president. We all think we do, we don’t really. We don’t really. What we do is we vote for these people. These people are the ones who actually have the vote that actuate everything, that make it happen. Each state selects its electors from a bunch of the good citizenry of that state, and they are proportional by the size of the congressional delegation from the states. For example, all of your Congress members and your senators combined produce the number of electoral votes you get in your state. So, California gets a whole lot, Texas gets a lot, Montana, North Dakota, not so much. The behavior of the electors is one of the great acts of trust in this country, because only in a few places are they actually bound to what the people and the population say. The can change their minds, and there have been rare occasions in which electors have gone to the actual process of electing the president and said, I disagree with my state, and they have cast another vote. One of the big reasons you always hear for the electoral college is that it evens out power a little bit. If you just had a popular vote, then the most populous state would really consolidate all the power, and if you lived in a place like North Dakota, you would have very, very little influence or ability to create any influence, unless you banded together with a bunch of other states. And beyond that, all the campaigning would only happen in giant population centers. The biggest con you hear is that it can override the popular vote. People can triangulate the electoral votes, and actually win the presidency when most of the people in the country do not want that person in the Oval Office. 

 

So 435 congressional seats, plus 100 seats in the U.S. Senate and three electors for the District of Columbia, that all adds up to 538 electoral college votes. It takes a majority of these votes, at least 270 to win the presidency. John King looks at the math for both of the candidates to see how votes could add up to history. 

 

Look at this, if president can take Iowa, can take Wisconsin and can take Ohio, it’s game over. If nothing else changed on the map, that would get the president to 271, and it would be game over. That’s why the president is ending his campaign right here in the heartland, places where he can talk about the auto bailout. He thinks that’s a big plus for him. So that’s one way. That is the president’s quickest way. I won’t say it’s the easiest, but it’s his easiest, not an easy way to 270. So what does that mean? It means for starters, Governor Romney has to take the state of Ohio. 

 

Let’s take these back and make them tossups and show you. That was the president’s fastest way. How does Governor Romney get there? He has to win the state of Florida. Not negotiable. Governor Romney needs Florida, he needs those 29 electoral votes. He has to take North Carolina. We already have it leaning that way, and he has to take Virginia as well. That’s 13 more. That would get Governor Romney there. Then, the governor’s most reasonable scenario is to take Ohio. No Republican has ever won without it. If Governor Romney can get those electoral votes, plus Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio, what does that do? That would get him to 266. Over here in the east, he would need just one more, any one of the remaining states. If Governor Romney can do Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio, any one of the remaining states would put him over the top. That’s what make this one so, so, so important. 

 

So who do you want to win? We’ve seen so many polls in this race for so many weeks now, we’re taking our own informal poll at cnnstudentnews.com. Tell us whether you’re hoping for the incumbent president, the former governor or someone else to lead the country.