Question: why do you think that california receives 55 electoral votes

title: Electoral College (United States)
text: Countervailing analyses which do take into consideration the sizes of the electoral voting blocs , such as the Banzhaf power index ( BPI ) model based on probability theory lead to very different conclusions about voters relative power . In 1968 , John F. Banzhaf III ( who developed the Banzhaf power index ) determined that a voter in the state of New York had , on average , 3.312 times as much voting power in presidential elections as a voter in any other U.S. state . It was found that based on 1990 census and districting , individual voters in California , the largest state , had 3.3 times more individual power to choose a President than voters of Montana , the largest of the minimum 3 elector states . Because Banzhaf 's method ignores the demographic makeup of the states , it has been criticized for treating votes like independent coin - flips . More empirically based models of voting yield results that seem to favor larger states less . Disadvantage