You can sense the finish line is close from the tone of the U.S. election campaign. The vote is next Tuesday and polls show this race is tightening in what鈥檚 been a bruising campaign.

says there are about 100 Electoral College votes still up for grabs, which means even though Hillary Clinton has an advantage in the Electoral College, it鈥檚 still possible for Donald Trump to win.

A quick primer on the Electoral College:  whichever candidate ends up with the most votes in each state becomes president. The popular vote doesn鈥檛 count here. Trump and Clinton need the majority of the Electoral College 鈥� 270 out of 538 electoral votes 鈥� to become president.

But the states aren鈥檛 weighted equally when it comes to how many votes they get. It鈥檚 based on their population, specifically on the U.S. Census. So California gets 55 votes (the highest among the states), whereas Alaska and Delaware are among the 8 states with only 3 votes.

Battleground States:You鈥檝e probably heard the term 鈥榖attleground state鈥� or 鈥榮wing state鈥�.

Most U.S. states are considered 鈥渟afe or likely鈥� for any Democrat (called blue states) or 鈥渟afe or likely鈥� for any Republic candidate (called red states), because they almost always go for that party.

The Democrats have an automatic edge in the electoral college because delegate-rich California (55) and New York (29) are considered safe 鈥渂lue鈥� states, according to the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Other states tend to be much closer races, although these all 鈥渓ean鈥� one way or the other. The Democrat-leaning states are New Hampshire, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada. The Republican-leaning states are Georgia and Arizona.

All eight or so of the 鈥渓ean鈥� states can be considered battlegrounds, although Florida (29), Ohio (18) and North Carolina (15) get the most attention, because they have been especially close in recent elections and have large numbers of delegates.

CTVNews.ca has put together brief video explainers on some of these battlegrounds (Graphics and video by Jesse Tahirali, text by Josh Dehaas and Josh Elliott):


Ohio (18 Electoral votes)

North Carolina (15 Electoral votes)

Florida (29 Electoral votes)

Arizona (11 Electoral votes)

Nevada (6 Electoral votes)