How are our general elections won?

Son, we live in a Representative Republic. This is not a Direct Democracy. Therefore, we elect our Presidents through an Electoral College. This means that there are Electors that vote for us, with a number of allocated votes that are based on the population of the State we live in.

Each State has it's own rules as to how this works, but for the most part Electors are bound to elect based on the popular vote of that State. And most States are "winner-take-all" States; meaning no matter how many votes one candidate has against another, if most of them are for Candidate A, then Candidate A wins all of the Electoral votes allocated to that State.

The system is ingenious. The United States is created to have less of a centralized rule, meaning that local citizens should have more power to decide for themselves what is right for them. And the U.S. is a huge geographical area with very diverse requirements. There are people with rural needs and desires. People with urban needs and desires. Religious organizations are even concentrated in certain parts of the country.

A citizen who lives in an apartment in New York City and who works as a stockbroker, has no care or need for matters that effect a farmer who has acres of land and a huge family in Idaho. So, to ensure that the farmer has the same power to decide who will be his or her leader as the stockbroker the Electoral College gives him/her representation by giving him/her an amount of votes. And if you get 30 States together with similar interests you can equal the amount of representation that the a few more populated States have.

If all we did was rely on the Popular vote, as a Direct Democracy would do, then New York and California would decide on issues for everybody else. That is not true representation, no?

All but the Presidential votes are done on a 1:1 ratio, where the popular vote gets the candidate elected. The Electoral College is ONLY used for the presidenital ticket race. Even then it is done on a state by state popular vote win.