Each state has the same number of electors as in Congress, and the District of Columbia also gets electors, bringing it to 538 electors. Most states they will cast all of their electoral votes to the candidate who won the state’s popular vote.

California has 54 electoral votes, the most of any state.

More: California election live results: Coachella Valley cities, House, Senate, propositions

Why does the Electoral College exist?

The Electoral College system is part of the US Constitution and represents a compromise between whether the president should be elected by Congress or by a popular vote, USA TODAY reported.

In a Saint Louis University School of Law podcastsadjunct professor Greg Willard said the framers of the U.S. Constitution felt that the “masses,” or male owners of property, could not be trusted to elect the next president. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton “expressed the importance of having electors,” two law reference librarians at the Law Library of Congress wrote in a Blog post from 2012. They pointed to the Federalist books as an insight into the Electoral College, in which Hamilton wrote about who should determine elections and the qualities those people would have.