When you hear about a presidential election game, you probably think of “take a shot every time Donald Trump repeats himself.” Maybe you think about making bets with all of your friends to see who can make the most money off of predicting the new president elect. Yet, I am not talking about those games. Have you ever realized that the presidential election is all one big game? There are little tricks within the game that help you win, even if you are not the most popular candidate, as we saw in the most recent election with Hillary Clinton actually winning the popular vote.

The biggest way that the presidential election is all a big game is based on campaigning. You figure out which states you need to win over in order to win. For example, if you are the Republican Candidate, you probably do not need to do much campaigning in Texas since the last time that Texas voted democrat was in 1976.

Yet, you need to campaign super hard in states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa and Minnesota. And, even still, those states can go either way. Pennsylvania typically leans blue, but it is still considered a swing state. Florida has given their votes towards the winning president elect in every election in the past ten elections.

So, my question is are you confused yet? I would hope so, because politics are kind of tricky if you think about it. Consider the presidential election similar to the SAT. When preparing for the SAT, you go and take SAT classes that do not just teach you how to be smarter, they teach you the ins and outs of how to do certain questions on the SAT. Yet, there is still a chance you will get the question wrong on the actual SAT. If you are running for office, you hire the best advisors who are educated on the election process. They teach you what to say to win over certain states and certain people. They tell you which states you need to put on the best face for because those states will be the ultimate ones determining your fate. Yet, after all of that work, you still may not gain a state’s Electoral College votes. In term, you could lose the election, which would be like scoring poorly on the SAT even after all of the practice and preparation you completed.

Ideally, the president elect just played the better game. You can lose at scrabble even if you graduated with an English degree from Harvard. So, if you ever do plan on running for office, I suggest start figuring out how to play this game right now. Obviously things will change and you will hire advisors but practice does make perfect. Katie Ledecky didn’t become a five time Olympic gold medalist during her first swim lesson the same way it is very difficult to hold a spot in the White House if you have never gone through an election or at least election preparation before. I am not exactly positive how Trump did it but I admire his very valiant effort and game strategy.