Winner takes all: how the electoral colleges work

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Therefore the president is not directly elected in a simple popular vote, as that would encourage candidates to campaign in the big cities and ignore rural states.

Instead, there are effectively 51 separate elections - one for each state plus another for the District of Columbia. Each state has a number of electoral votes, which are allocated according to how its residents cast their individual ballots.

Pennsylvania, for example, has 21 electoral votes. Like almost all states, it has a winner-takes-all policy so either John McCain or Barack Obama will get all 21 votes, depending on who gets the most votes locally.

In total there are 538 electoral votes at stake, so a candidate needs to win 270 to obtain a majority and win. In a tie, the decision passes to Congress.

Occasionally the system throws up the anomaly of the winner getting fewer popular votes than the loser. In 2000, George W Bush won with 50,456,002 votes, while Al Gore lost with 50,999,897.

If the polls are right, Barack Obama will win a clear victory, with more than 350 electoral college votes. However, John McCain could upset expectations if he wins all of the big swing states.

In the battleground states, Mr Obama has a six-point lead in Colorado, a 3.5-point lead in Florida, a two-point lead in Indiana, a 0.2 point lead in Missouri and a seven-point lead in Nevada.

In New Hampshire, he is 12 points ahead, in New Mexico he has a seven-point lead, in North Carolina a three-point lead, in Ohio a 5.8-point lead, in Pennsylvania a 10-point lead and in Virginia, a 6.5-point lead.