An important point to remember in US elections is that it is possible for the candidate with the most votes to not actually be the winner.

This is because the president is elected by the Electoral College, not directly by voters.

This is how it works…

Americans vote for their candidate on the ballot, but that vote actually serves to shape the group of “electors” who support their choice in the Electoral College.

There are a total of 538 voters across the US; 435 representatives from Congress, 100 Senators, and an additional three electors from the District of Columbia.

Each of the 50 states in the US has a number of electors based on its population.

California, with a population of about 40 million, has 54 Electoral College votes, while North Dakota, with about 762,000 people, has only three votes.

Most states have a winner-take-all system; therefore, if a candidate receives the most votes in a state, they receive all of the Electoral College votes.

For example, if a candidate wins 50.1% of the vote in California, they have all 54 electoral votes in the state.

Only two states, Maine and Nebraska, with four and five electors, respectively, apportion their electoral votes based on the popular vote each candidate receives.

The first two electors go to the overall winner of the popular vote, and the rest are divided proportionally.

We’ll use Nebraska’s 2020 results to explain this: State residents cast 556,846 votes for Mr. Trump and 374,583 for Mr. Biden.

Nebraska has five electoral votes, so in most other states Mr. Trump would take all five. But because Nebraska divided them, four electoral votes went to Mr. Trump and one to Mr. Biden.

The first candidate to receive 270 Electoral College votes wins the presidency.

In the last election, Mr Biden won with 306 votes to Mr Trump’s 232 votes.

Therefore, it is possible for a candidate to become president by winning tough races in certain states despite receiving fewer votes across the country.

This happened in 2016, when Hillary Clinton received almost three million more votes than Mr. Trump; but he won the presidency with 304 votes to the Electoral College’s 227 votes.