On 8th November 2016, Americans took part in general elections to elect their new President. This year the battle for Presidency was a different one. The election favored Donald Trump, the Republican candidate. Trump beat the opposition leader Hilary Clinton, the Democratic candidate despite the fact that Hilary Clinton won the popular vote. How is it possible to become President of USA even if you don't have the majority of vote ? The answer lies in the working principle of Electoral College.
Electoral college is a house of representatives. The citizens of Americans does not directly elect their President. They elect representatives to Electoral college. These members of electoral college in turn elect the new President. So its not the people's majority of votes that matter rather the number of representatives favoring a particular Presidential candidate that matters. Each state has a certain number of seats allocated to Electoral college. The bigger states have more seats while the smaller states have less seats. However a minimum of 3 seats are allocated to any state. Let's take a state where 30 Electoral seats are allocated. If the Republicans win 16 seats in that state, they have the majority of seats in that state. So they automatically will get the other 14 electoral seats too regardless of the fact that they lost in that 14 seats. This means that Republicans now have 30 seats from a single state. In this way you only need to win the biggest states where there is a lot of electoral seats. Hence we see the Presidential candidates running most of their campaign in big states such as Florida, California etc. Trump took advantage of this system and hence won the Presidential election.
