In the USA they have a separately elected leader that does not sit in either the Senate or in the House of Representatives. Presidential elections occur rigidly every four years and use the Electoral College system, which is a variation of the first-past-the-post system. In each of the fifty states a direct vote is held, there would normally be 2 or 3 candidates that would campaign in every state and some that would only campaign in certain areas e.g. George Wallace in 1968. The votes in each state are then counted and a winner for that state is declared. That candidate will then receive all the Electoral College votes allocated to that particular state. Electoral College votes are determined by the number of representatives that state has in the House of Representatives, which are allocated depending on the size of the state population. For example a large state like California has 52 representatives which means that it has 52 EC votes, plus 1 for each of it'

The balance of power in the Electoral College has now shifted away from the smaller populated northern states, such as Wyoming and Alaska, towards the larger southern states, such as California, Texas and Florida.

Every decade there is a national census in the US, and from these figures the number of representatives per state is calculated, any changes of which will also result in a change in the number of EC votes per state. As the US develops it becomes less reliant on industry, with most new jobs being created in the service sector. This gradual change has seen a migration of people from the industrialist north to the warmer climes of the south, where many of the new jobs are. While the general trend in the US is a growth in population, the northern states are not growing by the same amount as the southern states. This means that they lost representatives and therefore have also lost EC votes. Between 1970 and 1990 New York state's population grew by up to 15%, this is tiny compared to states like California which have seen population growth of over 50%. In Ohio, another state to lose votes, the population has actually decreased by up to 5%. Detroit is a good example of a northern industrial city, between 1970 and 1990 its population dropped by 31%, while southern cities such as Phoenix and San Diego have seen rises in population of 69% and 64% respectively. These popu

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