The Daily Bulletin Archive

The Presidential Electoral College Prediction Contest is back.

Contest: Correctly predict the electoral college vote totals for this year's presidential candidates. Ties are broken by predicting the percentage of the national vote garnered by Donald Trump.

Prize: Fame and glory! Your name published in the Buffalo State Daily Bulletin!

Deadline: All entries must be delivered to the appropriate envelope, posted next to the Political Science Department, Classroom Building B218, by noon, Monday, November 7. No late entries will be accepted.

Method: Entry forms are available outside Classroom Building B218. Only one submission per contestant. No replacements allowed. Multiple submissions presented by the same contestant will nullify all submissions by that contestant. Any attempts to look at other previously submitted entries will be grounds for dismissal of that contestant and shall bring lasting shame to his or her family! No peeking!

Background: The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the president by a vote in Congress and election of the president by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The Electoral College process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for president and vice president, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress. The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the president. A state’s entitled allotment of electors equals the number of members in its congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for its senators. Read more about the allocation of electoral votes. Under the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution, the District of Columbia is allocated three electors and treated like a state for purposes of the Electoral College. For this reason, in the following discussion, the word “state” also refers to the District of Columbia. Each candidate running for president in a state has his or her own group of electors. The electors are generally chosen by the candidate’s political party, but state laws vary on how the electors are selected and what their responsibilities are. Read more about the qualifications of the electors and restrictions on who the electors may vote for. Most states have a “winner-take-all” system that awards all electors to the winning presidential candidate. However, Maine and Nebraska each have a variation of “proportional representation.”