How voting system works

Never mind the national polls - what matters in the race for the White House is winning states.

Many Americans think they have a direct vote for their president. They don't. As Al Gore found in 2000, you can get the most votes and still lose. Instead, the election revolves around bagging individual states, with each win scoring towards the eventual result.

The system is rooted in American history. The Founding Fathers didn't trust the ordinary voter and also aimed to prevent a candidate popular in one big region simply ignoring the smaller states. So they designed an electoral college to make the final choice and give every state its own bargaining chips. Smaller states get proportionately more votes. Crucially, the winner in each state takes all college votes.

Everything now revolves around the state-bagging arithmetic. When the national polls are close, the crunch comes in a handful of so-called swing states where a few hundred votes can move a presidential mountain.

Florida matters most because it is both big and marginal. Gore lost there by just 369 votes and saw its 27 electoral college places - and the presidency - go to Bush.