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Electoral College votes by state, updated for 2026
The Electoral College is how the United States picks its president. Each state gets one vote per senator plus one per US House seat. That means every state has a floor of 3 electors and a ceiling that scales with population. California tops the list with 54, followed by Texas at 40, Florida at 30, and New York at 28. The magic number to win is 270. This page lists every state's current allocation, explains the last reapportionment shift, and points out where the map is most likely to tip in 2028.
Electoral votes by state (2024 and 2028)
These numbers are set by the 2020 Census reapportionment and apply through the 2028 presidential election. Total electors: 538 across 50 states plus the District of Columbia.
| State | Electoral votes | House seats |
|---|---|---|
| California | 54 | 52 |
| Texas | 40 | 38 |
| Florida | 30 | 28 |
| New York | 28 | 26 |
| Illinois | 19 | 17 |
| Pennsylvania | 19 | 17 |
| Ohio | 17 | 15 |
| Georgia | 16 | 14 |
| North Carolina | 16 | 14 |
| Michigan | 15 | 13 |
| New Jersey | 14 | 12 |
| Virginia | 13 | 11 |
| Washington | 12 | 10 |
| Arizona | 11 | 9 |
| Indiana | 11 | 9 |
| Massachusetts | 11 | 9 |
| Tennessee | 11 | 9 |
| Colorado | 10 | 8 |
| Maryland | 10 | 8 |
| Minnesota | 10 | 8 |
| Missouri | 10 | 8 |
| Wisconsin | 10 | 8 |
| Alabama | 9 | 7 |
| South Carolina | 9 | 7 |
| Kentucky | 8 | 6 |
| Louisiana | 8 | 6 |
| Oregon | 8 | 6 |
| Connecticut | 7 | 5 |
| Oklahoma | 7 | 5 |
| Arkansas | 6 | 4 |
| Iowa | 6 | 4 |
| Kansas | 6 | 4 |
| Mississippi | 6 | 4 |
| Nevada | 6 | 4 |
| Utah | 6 | 4 |
| Nebraska | 5 | 3 |
| New Mexico | 5 | 3 |
| Hawaii | 4 | 2 |
| Idaho | 4 | 2 |
| Maine | 4 | 2 |
| Montana | 4 | 2 |
| New Hampshire | 4 | 2 |
| Rhode Island | 4 | 2 |
| West Virginia | 4 | 2 |
| Alaska | 3 | 1 |
| Delaware | 3 | 1 |
| North Dakota | 3 | 1 |
| South Dakota | 3 | 1 |
| Vermont | 3 | 1 |
| Wyoming | 3 | 1 |
| District of Columbia | 3 | 0 |
How the math works: senators plus House seats
Article II of the Constitution gives each state a number of electors equal to its total congressional delegation. Every state has 2 senators regardless of population, and at least 1 House member. So Wyoming, with fewer than 600,000 residents, gets 3 electors. California, with more than 39 million, gets 54. The District of Columbia gets 3 by the 23rd Amendment, which passed in 1961 and treats DC as if it were the smallest state.
The House itself was capped at 435 members by the Reapportionment Act of 1929. Every ten years the Census Bureau reruns the "method of equal proportions" and redistributes those 435 seats across the 50 states. Add 100 senators and DC's 3 and you get the familiar 538 total.
What the 2020 census changed
The 2020 reapportionment moved 7 seats between states, taking effect for the 2024 election and staying in place for 2028. States that gained seats:
- Texas +2 (from 38 electoral votes to 40)
- Florida +1 (from 29 to 30)
- Colorado +1 (from 9 to 10)
- Montana +1 (from 3 to 4)
- North Carolina +1 (from 15 to 16)
- Oregon +1 (from 7 to 8)
States that lost seats:
- California -1 (from 55 to 54, the first time in state history)
- Illinois -1 (from 20 to 19)
- Michigan -1 (from 16 to 15)
- New York -1 (from 29 to 28)
- Ohio -1 (from 18 to 17)
- Pennsylvania -1 (from 20 to 19)
- West Virginia -1 (from 5 to 4)
The net effect: seats shifted from the Rust Belt and the Northeast toward the Sun Belt and Mountain West. Texas, Florida, and North Carolina were the biggest structural winners.
Winner-take-all versus the Maine and Nebraska exception
Forty-eight states plus DC award every elector to whichever candidate wins the statewide popular vote. Maine and Nebraska use the congressional district method instead: one elector per congressional district, plus 2 statewide bonus electors. This means both states can split their electoral votes.
Maine has split three times: 2016, 2020, and 2024, each time sending one elector from the ME-2 district (which covers rural northern Maine) to the Republican while the statewide vote and ME-1 went to the Democrat. Nebraska split in 2008 (Obama took NE-2, the Omaha district), 2020 (Biden took NE-2), and 2024 (Harris took NE-2). NE-2 has become a genuine swing district while the rest of Nebraska stays reliably red.
Swing states that decide modern elections
In presidential math, most of the 538 electors are locked in years ahead of election day. California's 54 will be Democratic; Wyoming's 3 will be Republican. Only a handful of states swing enough to matter. The 2024 election was decided by seven of them.
- Pennsylvania (19): the largest swing prize. Won by Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, Trump in 2024.
- Georgia (16): flipped Democratic in 2020 for the first time since 1992, back to Republican in 2024.
- North Carolina (16): the sole Sun Belt swing state that has stayed Republican in every cycle since 2008 except Obama's 2008 win.
- Michigan (15): the classic Blue Wall pivot, Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, Trump in 2024.
- Arizona (11): Democratic in 2020 for the first time since 1996, Republican in 2024.
- Wisconsin (10): decided by fewer than 1 point in each of the last three presidential elections.
- Nevada (6): a persistent margin state with a large Latino electorate.
Together these seven states account for 93 electoral votes, roughly one-sixth of the total but effectively all the drama.
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