Election Outcomes

Voters' feelings about parties, candidates, and issues significantly impact their voting decisions.
Presidential campaigns focus on activating party loyalists.
Many independent voters lean towards one party.

Socioeconomic status, residence, religion, ethnicity, gender, and age influence voting patterns.
Minorities, women, lower-income citizens, and urban residents tend to vote Democratic.
Rural, religious, and white voters tend to vote Republican.
Party identification is the best predictor of voting behavior.

Issue voting often involves retrospective voting, based on the economy, war, and peace.
Voters reward the incumbent party during good economic times and punish them during bad times.
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly influenced the 2020 election.
Foreign policy matters, especially during wars, but domestic issues usually take precedence.

Voters choose electors who pledge to support their party's candidate.
Number of electors per state equals representatives in the House plus senators.
Most states use a winner-take-all system, except Maine and Nebraska.
A candidate needs a majority of electoral votes (270) to win.
If no candidate wins a majority, the House of Representatives decides.
Candidates can win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College, which has occurred five times.
Small states have disproportionate influence.

Many support a direct popular vote system, but small and battleground states are unlikely to support it.
A popular vote system could lead to a president elected with only a plurality of the vote.
Retaining the Electoral College but removing the winner-take-all feature is another suggestion.

Elections and participation in the U.S. have become more democratic over time.
The Seventeenth Amendment allowed for direct election of senators.
The method of electing the president has changed from what the framers intended.