Say, as a hypothetical, that candidate X wins the state of California by only 1,000 votes. California is the nation's largest state, so it accordingly has the most electoral votes, in this case 55. Yet if Candidate X doesn't have a very good ground game in some other state(s), for example, New York, Massachusetts, and North Carolina, they could very well lose in a landslide to another candidate, say candidate Y, albeit only in those states. However, if we add up the electoral votes in the 3 states candidate X lost big in we get (29+11+15) = 55 electoral votes.
That means, even though candidate X lost big to candidate Yin the popular vote over these 4 states, perhaps by hundreds of thousands of votes, the net electoral college loss is zero. This situation is unlikely to happen, but far from impossible. The way the electoral college is set up means that instead of trying to increase voter turnout everywhere they can, candidates concentrate on big swing states to help them get over the magic number of 270 electoral votes, the amount needed for a majority. The victory in California gave candidate X over 20% of that total. This math works accords other states as well. Small wins in larger states can outweigh huge losses in small ones, even if the margin of victory is as small as 1 vote.
Do you want to sit on the sidelines while only a few states really vote for president?
