If one candidate won only five most populous states and another candidate won all the other states, who would win the election?

Good question! Because of the way our Electoral College is set up many people have this type of question. The short answer to your question is that the person who won the other 45 states would become president.

Technically, we do not directly vote for president. We have electors from each state that do so. The number of electors from each state depends on its population. Each State gets two, equal to the number of Senators, plus a number based on population--the number of members of the House of Representatives. The current possible total of Electoral College votes is 538. It takes 270 in order to become president. At this time, the five most populous states are California (55 electoral votes), Texas (34), New York (31), Florida (27) and Illinois (21). The total votes that these five states have is 168--not enough to win the presidency. If you added in the next six largest, however, the person could win with eleven states. Adding Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, and New Jersey would give a total of 271 electoral votes.