Unless you've been living under a rock, you will know that there was a Presidential election on November 8th. Confusing everyone was the fact that Donald Trump won the electoral vote, yet Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. This made me think, how does the Electoral College work and does it accurately represent the people?

This turned out to be a fantastic civic learning experience for me. And exploring the data with Tableau helped me understand how it all works. I know a lot of people, particularly those I work with in the U.K., that are confused by this election and how the popular candidate didn't win. To aid in this understanding, I've created this story points visualisation to explain how the electoral college works, how electoral votes are allocated, and how the election would have turned out if the electoral college was based strictly on population.