Direct answer first:
- Each state’s number of electors equals its total number of representatives in Congress plus its two senators. Since there are 435 Representatives and 100 Senators (plus 3 electors for Washington, D.C., due to the Twenty-Third Amendment), the total is 538 electors. Small states tend to have a higher per-capita influence because they have as few as 3 electors (the minimum), while larger states have many more electors but far more residents, so per-voter influence is smaller in big states.
Details
- How the electors are allocated
- Each state gets electors equal to its number of Representatives in the House, plus two for its Senators. The House representation is apportioned every ten years based on the decennial census. This means the exact numbers can shift after each census, though the total remains 538.
* Washington, D.C. is allocated electors as if it were a state but cannot exceed the number of electors of the least populous state, which effectively gives D.C. 3 electors. The overall total remains 538.
- The practical impact for small states
- Because every state has at least 3 electors, small states receive a relatively larger share per capita. For example, Wyoming and similar small states can have a higher electoral-vote-per-capita ratio than oversized states, giving their voters proportionally more influence in a presidential race than voters in the most populous states.
* The system can produce outcomes where the winner of the nationwide popular vote does not win the presidency, reflecting the structural bias toward less-populous states in the Electoral College. This is a core feature (and source of debate) of the current system.
- Current counts (illustrative snapshot; counts are subject to change after each census)
- California has a large share (54 electors in the latest tallies), followed by Texas (40), Florida (30), New York (28), Illinois (19), and Pennsylvania (19). Other states have 17–3 electors depending on their population and congressional delegation.
If you’d like, I can pull the most current state-by-state counts from an authoritative source and present them in a clean list or a table, and explain how the 2020 or 2020s census adjustments would affect future allocations.
