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14 Oct 2004
Remember the 2000 election (sure you do), when Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote? Well, it's happened before, and it's one of the strongest arguments that people use for abolishing the electoral college (an argument that I haven't chosen a side on, to be honest). It got me thinking: how much could a candidate lose the popular vote by and still win the electoral vote? The candidate would have to get half (plus one) of the votes in "strong states", and zero votes in "weak states". In this case, a state's strength is defined as electoral votes per voter.
A candidate could win the election with only 21.7% of the national popular vote by just squeaking by in AK, AL, AR, AZ, CO, CT, DC, DE, GA, HI, IA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, MD, ME, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NM, NV, NY, OK, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WV, and WY and getting no votes in any other states. You'll note that CT, MD, and VA are "weaker" states than California, but since it has such a large population, including it instead of the three weaker states increases the final total quite a bit.
Note that I had to ignore Maine and Nebraska's congressional district method, since it would add too many extra variables.
Update 10-15: I should probably point out that I used the turnout numbers for the 2000 election, since I assumed that was a good enough estimate, but the new electoral vote counts (i.e. 7 for CT instead of 8). You can check out my actual data.
nomad says:
I wonder what it would take to exploit this…
Also, MT = Montana != Moveable Type
Logan says:
Stupid acronym module should know that I mean Montana!
I don’t think it’s really exploitable. The list contains some very-Republican states (Utah, Wyoming, the Dakotas), and some very-Democratic states (DC, New York), so it’d really need to be a totally cross-party candidate, like Ross Perot or something (and that’s not even a joke).
But the more important point was that 48.38% Gore to 47.87% Bush was really quite close considering how weird things can really get with the current electoral system.
nomad says:
I wasn’t thinking of swaying the voters that live there already, I was thinking more of something like The Free State Project.
But yeah the point is that the 2000 election could have been alot more absurd, and as such, the 2004 election could also be alot more absurd.
Chris says:
Wouldn’t it be interesting to flip the question? What is the minimum number of states a candidate needs to win to have a majority of the popular vote? Assumming 100% of the people vote, one would need to carry just 10 states (see the link provided).
This is equally troubling to me. If we had a direct popular vote, someone could get zero votes in 40 states but still win the election by taking all the votes in the most populous states.
While not perfect, I do feel that this is one of the electoral college’s bright points—it “pushes” one to have broad support rather than localized support in a few states. Check me on this, but I think that the EU requires a double majority for some things—-so you must win the majority of the popular vote, but also the majority of the countries involved.
We might try this…but I suspect that a double majority would not be obtained in MOST elections. However, I do feel that we should keep to this federalist idea. The USA is a combination of states…and it is the states who should elect the president (not the people). The people may tell the states who to vote for and the states can decide on proportional or winner-take-all systems, but ultimately, it should be a state’s decision.
A direct population vote “assumes” (perhaps that is not the best word) that population size is the best determiner of state’s value to the country. New York is a great financial center and the country would be in trouble without—perhaps not to the same degree, but there are farm states who also have great contributions to our country…and without them, we would also be in trouble. New York just happens to have a large population—one must remember that a large population and a great financial center are not equivalent….they don’t even imply each other.