kv wrote:Yes, it is one of the "battleground" states both are fighting for...Clinton needs a state or two of these according to polls...trump needs most of them to win..so Clinton winning just 1 or 2 seals it for her...so the whole race is those states...some states like California have been Democrat by a large percentage for decades now.
Florida has huge electoral votes...if trump can't win it this election will be over in a hurry (it will be imho)
This is exactly right. For international observers, just go to this page on 538:
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/201 ... id=rrpromo
Scroll down to "Who’s ahead in each state and by how much". That list is sorted by "chance of tipping the election", because it's the closest races with the most electoral votes.
Electoral votes are the actual way the election is decided, not the popular vote. With I think one or two exceptions, it's a state-by-state all-or-nothing thing where the candidate with the most votes in the state gets all the electoral college votes that that state has. The number of electoral votes is based on population, so California and New York are the two biggest Democratic states -- Clinton has those locked down, and also has Illinois which is really big as well. Texas is also very big (38) and will likely go to Trump. Florida has a lot of votes (29) and is a literal toss-up, just like it was in 2000.
The winner needs 269 Electoral College votes. California has 55, NY has 29, and IL has 20 -- so Clinton has 104 votes basically by default, without even considering all the small New England states that are solid blue.
Btw, even if Trump gets Florida, he'd still need North Carolina and New Hampshire to pull off a win.