JACKSON, Wyo. — Just eight days now before Election Day and, if you are wondering: “Will my vote count on a national level?” the answer is: pretty much, yeah.
Not all votes are created equal. Some votes carry more weight than others simply because of the somewhat complicated way our nation’s voting system is organized. Members of Congress are elected by direct popular vote. But the president is chosen by the Electoral College, a group selected by voters when they cast a ballot for commander-in-chief.
In a presidential election, voter power varies widely by state. While all votes are theoretically counted equally—one person, one vote—the choices of swing-state citizens are more influential. It’s safe to assume that Alabama will vote Republican and California will vote Democratic in the upcoming election.
By contrast, the electoral results of swing states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan are up in the air, giving their voters more impact.
The same principle applies to voter power in the Senate. For example, it’s extremely likely that a Republican senator from Kentucky and a Democratic senator from Delaware will both be re-elected. But voters’ choices for senators in swing states hold much more power because they determine which political party controls the Senate.
So which states will decide the outcome of the upcoming election? As American voters head to the polls on Nov. 3 to elect the next leader of the free world as well as new senators in certain states, WalletHub compared the relative influence of voters in both the presidential and Senate races in its recent ‘2020’s States with the Most & Least Powerful Voters.’
In order to make such a comparison, WalletHub calculated a ‘Voter Power Score’ for each state and for each type of election.
Wyoming ranked middle-of-the-pack, coming in 34th overall in the presidential election. In the Senate race, the Equality State has a bit more pull, landing in 18th.
