What Really Happened in the Electoral College, II

In a previous post, I analyzed the reasons behind the wide divergence between the Electoral College and national popular vote in 2016, finding that although the Electoral College had a slight bias in favor of Obama in 2012, Trump was able to improve his margins in the crucial Great Lakes states while Hillary Clinton's improvements mostly came in California and Texas, neither of which switched any electoral votes. A further comparison of the 2012 and 2016 elections, and the shifts in the states between them, sheds light on the real function of the Electoral College in our republic. 

So, the bias in the Electoral College toward Republicans that proved decisive in 2016 was not present in 2012. Opponents of the Electoral College have a point in noting that it has a bias in favor of small states, since each state is guaranteed two electors for each of its senators. In both recent elections where the Electoral College and popular vote conflicted, the Republican carried thirty states while the Democrat carried twenty and the District of Columbia. If the Electoral College only allocated electors based on House representation, the Republican’s total would drop by sixty in both cases, while the Democrat’s would drop by forty-two. This would be enough to reverse the 2000 election results (from a 271-267 Bush victory to a 225-211 Gore one) but not 2016. Donald Trump would have won by a narrower margin (246 to 190, instead of 306 to 232), but he still would have won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by a wider margin than Bush.

If the Electoral College’s bias toward small states alone does not account for Trump’s victory, what else does? In 2012, President Obama got sixty electoral votes from states he carried by less than five percent of the vote. He received a further eighty-two electoral votes from states (and the second congressional district in Maine) that he carried by between five and ten percent of the vote, for a total of 142 electoral votes, or just over forty percent of his total of 332 electoral votes. By contrast, Mitt Romney carried only one state (North Carolina) by less than five percent, and only three (Missouri, Georgia, and Arizona, plus one electoral vote from a congressional district in Nebraska) by a margin of between five and ten percent. Only fifty-three of Romney’s 206 electoral votes came from these states. Put another way, Obama won the electoral votes of states decided by ten percent or more fairly narrowly (190 to 153), but won a near three-to-one margin among states decided by less than ten percent (142 to 53). Where Romney won, he tended to win big; Obama carried most of the states that were decided by narrower margins.

    

           In 2016, this trend reversed between the parties and became even more pronounced. Among states and districts that were decided by ten percent of the vote or more, Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump, 183 electoral votes to 126. However, Hillary Clinton only carried two states by between five and ten percent, and five states by less than five percent, getting only forty-nine additional votes. Donald Trump, however, received more than half his electoral votes- 180 out of 306- from states he carried by less than ten percent of the vote.  Trump received almost eighty percent (180 out of 229) of the electoral votes from states decided by less than ten percent of the vote.

Donald Trump's narrow victories in the crucial states for 2016 allowed him to benefit from the Electoral College, but they pose the risk of a humiliating defeat this year. Because so many red states, particularly large ones, were close in 2016, a swing of a few percent of the vote to Joe Biden could dramatically reduce Trump's Electoral College tally, particularly if Biden can poach states like Ohio, Georgia, or Texas. If the most pessimistic polls for Trump are right, he could have the lowest number of electoral votes for any Republican since 1964 (currently, that is Bob Dole's loss with 159 electoral votes in 1996).

These examples show the true nature of the Electoral College. Compared to the popular vote, it punishes running up large vote totals in a few states and rewards building a coalition that can win a majority, or at least a plurality, in many states. In 2016, this meant that Donald Trump’s ability to win over the Rust Belt counted for more than Hillary Clinton’s supermajority in California, but there is no guarantee that it will not favor the Democrats in future elections, as it did as recently as 2012. Whether or not Americans support replacing the Electoral College with the national popular vote, they need to understand its true effect on our elections.