Speaking English Made Easy: How To Talk About Presidential Elections

49,898 views ・ 2024-10-29

Rachel's English


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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With the election around the corner, I  thought I would make a video
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for my students around the world to help them understand how the 
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presidential election works in the United States. 
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I'm Rachel and I've been teaching the  American accent   
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and English as a second language here on YouTube for over 15 years, 
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check out rachelsenglish.com/free to get my free course on Mastering the American accent.
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In the United States, we use an electoral college system. So each state
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is given a certain number of electoral college votes. Let's look at this map. 
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So underneath each state abbreviation,
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you'll see the number of electoral college votes that state has.
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Now, let's take Florida for example. This is  a state where I was born and raised
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and I did vote on my 18th birthday.  
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My birthday is November 5. This year, the election is on my birthday and when
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I turned 18, there was a presidential  election on my birthday.
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So, I got to vote for the president on my birthday, it was pretty fun.
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When you're 18 that's when you become eligible  
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to vote in the United States. So, let's take  the State of Florida for example. It has 30  
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Electoral College votes. So out of all of  the people in Florida, they're going to  
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cast their votes for the Republican nominee  or the Democratic nominee or a third party,  
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and it doesn't matter how many votes anyone gets outside of the winning
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candidate. So, even if there's a candidate there that wins by just one  
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total vote, the State of Florida all 30 of those votes go towards that
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one winning candidate. So, in other words we don't use a popular vote  
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in the United States. It's not one vote  cast equals one vote for that candidate,  
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but it goes state by state whichever candidate wins that State,
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wins all the Electoral College votes. Then you add up the Electoral 
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College votes, and whoever gets to 270 wins. 
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Now, I should say there are a few states that split their Electoral College votes.
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That would be both Maine and Nebraska.
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All the other 48 states, it's all or nothing. The winner gets everything and second  
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place even if they got almost as many votes, they get nothing. 
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This map is colored according to projected winner of those votes.
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So, if it's a very dark blue that means it's very likely that the Democrat will win that state.  
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If it's a lighter blue, then it's less likely.  
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If it's a dark red, then it's very likely that the Republican candidate in this case, 
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Donald Trump will win the state, and the lighter the color the less likely it is. 
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And then we have these tan States, and  those are states where it's a toss-up.  
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It's too early to tell who will win. Will it be Donald Trump or will it be Kamala Harris. 
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Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't  love the Electoral College.
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Let me show you why. 
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I just looked it up. Idaho has 1,44,380 registered voters and they get four votes  
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in the Electoral College. Pennsylvania on the other hand has 8,838 ,100 registered voters  
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and 19 Electoral College votes. So if you do the math one Electoral College vote in Idaho 
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is made by 23,5 195 people voting.
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One in Pennsylvania is equal to 465,000 people voting. 
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In other words, in Pennsylvania many more people are represented by one vote
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in the Electoral College.  
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In other words, my vote, my voice is deluded, is less important, it's less loud,  
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because I have to join with 400,000 other people to make one vote
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whereas in Idaho, they can join with almost half as many people to make their vote.  
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So, basically my vote counts less because my vote is a smaller fraction of an
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electoral college vote than in other states and there are  
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probably no states where it's exactly even.
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So, yeah I wish we just had a popular vote  
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in the United States but we don't. So,  what does that mean? Let's look at how  
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that's played out in the last few elections.
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This is the map showing the Electoral College wins  
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of each candidate in the 2016 election when Donald Trump won.
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You can see he easily got to 270 votes,  by getting all of the Electoral College votes
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for all of these red states. But if you look at the popular vote, you can see that  
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Donald Trump got 62 million and Hillary Clinton got 65 million. So,  
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she actually won the popular vote, more  people voted for her but because of the  
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way that the electoral map works,
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the more people that voted for her were in states where their vote was a little bit weaker.  
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So, Donald Trump ended up winning the election,  
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this has only happened twice in the history of the United States
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but it has happened more recently. It happened in 2016 
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and it happened in 2000. So, to me that's one issue with the Electoral  
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College. Another issue that I feel like  the Electoral College makes apparent,  
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is that honestly, I think cheating and fraud  becomes more of a problem.
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You might only have  
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to turn one state, one close battleground  swing state in order to make an election  
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different, the election outcome different.
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Let's compare the map from the 2016 election to the 2020 election.  
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There are several states that swung. They changed from voting Republican in 2016  
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to voting Democrat in 2020. Wisconsin changed from red to blue,
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Georgia changed from red to blue, Arizona changed from red to blue,
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Pennsylvania changed from red to blue. If you're confused about this state here  
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and why it doesn't have a label, it's actually just part of Michigan. 
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On election night, I always think it's exciting  to watch the returns
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as they come in. The returns  
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would be all of the counted votes and it  goes county by county. So, for example,  
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in Alachua county in Florida where I grew up, 
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they may report their votes before a different county has finished counting.  
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And as soon as enough of the votes are in to make a call, the network that you're 
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watching will call the state and you'll see all of those Electoral  
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College votes go in the column of that candidate.
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Living in Pennsylvania, voting in Pennsylvania,  
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I'm very interested to see how this goes.
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I grew up in Florida, I cast my first vote there. Then I moved to Indiana
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for college, then I moved to Massachusetts for graduate school,  
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then New York City and now I'm in Pennsylvania.
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So you can see I've lived in red States, I've lived in blue States,  
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and now I'm in a swing state.So, those are the basics of how the Electoral  
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College works and how the Electoral college is different from a popular vote and how a person  
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can actually win the popular vote but not win the presidency in the United States of America. 
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I'll be casting my vote on my birthday  November 5th, will you?
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Keep your learning going now with this video and don't forget to subscribe 
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with notifications on, I love being your English teacher.  
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That's it and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.
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