CALIFORNIA, USA — As the electoral vote is tallied for the presidential election, the West Coast is still waiting to make its impact. Among the western states, California dwarfs the others with a whopping 54 electoral votes.
The Electoral College has had 538 votes for decades. It's the 270 votes that ultimately determine who takes the White House.
However, Electoral College changes stemming from the 2020 Census will reshape the presidential battleground for the 2024 race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
California is one of seven states that lost an electoral vote. The state previously had 55 in 2020. Other Democratic strongholds seeing decreases include Illinois and New York, each losing one electoral vote.
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The battleground swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, which flipped from Trump in 2016 to President Joe Biden in 2020, also lost one electoral vote each. Both have attracted significant attention from Harris and Trump during the 2024 campaign.
Ohio and West Virginia, both of which backed Trump in recent elections, also saw their electoral votes decrease by one.
Why did the Electoral College representation change?
These changes resulted from the Method of Equal Proportions, the mathematical formula used to determine congressional representation based on state population shifts documented in the 2020 Census.
The Electoral College consists of each state's congressional delegation — one vote for each House member and senator — plus three votes for the District of Columbia.
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