Let's say you have a huge bin full of 300 million M&Ms. Some are red. Some are blue. Some are green.
You're trying to estimate how just many M&Ms in the bin are either red, blue, or green. There's a scooper that can take out precisely 1000 M&Ms at a time.
You dip the scooper and get a count of 410 red, 520 blue, and 70 green.
You do it again and get 370 red, 530 blue, and 100 green.
You do it again and get 430 red, 550 blue, and 20 green.
You do this several more times over weeks and months, and each time you always get a count where the blue M&Ms are 7.5% (on avg) more than the red M&Ms, and 46% (on avg.) more than the green M&Ms.
You are now ready to say that the majority of the M&Ms in the bin are blue.
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(To continue the analogy: the big question, of course, isn't whether the majority of the M&Ms in the bin are blue, it's whether there's a majority of blue M&Ms in the right places in the barrel to wind up with a majority of Electoral M&Ms...)
And what about all those yellow and brown M&Ms.
It is so typical of our history that the votes of the minorities are discounted. 
Problem solved!
-Laelth
