Who do you think Will Win?

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Who do you think will win the US Presidential election?  That is the question on a lot of minds lately.  And some people think they know the answer.  How?  Because they asked.

Every day you see headlines claiming one candidate is ahead of the other.  But the votes have not been cast and counted yet so how do they know who will win?  The answer is they take an opinion poll.   They ask a small group of people, "Who would you vote for if the election was held today?"  And from that small group, they can make an educated guess of how the larger group of people will answer.  Of course, it's all very scientific about how they do it and it's usually quite accurate but keep this in mind.  

A poll is based on the day they ask the question.  People's opinions can change.  They can change their minds about who they want to vote for.   That is why you see different answers on different days.  One day the newspapers say Romney is winning and the next day they say Obama is winning.  But remember, until the official election day these numbers don't count.  They don't mean that anyone has won or lost the election yet.  They are simply a way to measure what might happen.  

So, how does that connect with the Electoral Votes that we have been talking about all this week?  I'm glad you asked.  If we take a map of the US and we use the numbers from the opinion polls to color the states blue for the ones that will most likely vote for the Democratic candidate Barack Obama or red for the Republican candidate Mitt Romney we get an idea of how many electoral votes that the candidates can expect so far.   If you want to take a look at one of these maps click on this link for Rand McNally.  So far neither candidate has reached the magic number of 270 electoral votes that are needed to win.   And you will notice that 10 of the states, as of today, are grey.  That means the poll numbers from those states are too close to decide.  

These states in particular are very important to the candidates.   Winning these states can help them reach the number of electoral votes they need to win.  And what's that number again?  That's right 270.  So, the candidates will be spending a lot of time and money in those states and not so much time in the other states.   We call them Battle Ground States because the competition between the 2 candidates is fiercer in those states.  Another name for the grey states is Swing States because the vote swings back and forth between the 2 candidates.  Or they might simply be called Undecided States because the voters have not yet decided who to vote for on election day.

Thanks for listening.  This has been Cassie Brenn for fastfoodenglish.blogspot.com.