Electoral College Ratings: Expect Another Highly Competitive Election

[mvymvy]

25. 2024 Republican could win with more than 5% less popular votes than Democrat

Before anti-democracy Republicans, and new voter suppression and election subversion laws, based on the Big Lie/Big Grift, the system with 2020 election laws meant that the winning 2024 presidential candidate could need a national popular vote win of 5 percentage points or more in order to squeak out an Electoral College victory.

The 2024 race could be reduced to 15% of the US, in 4 competitive battleground states, with as few as 43 electoral votes, where virtually all attention will be focused

Policies important to the citizens of 38+ non-battleground states have not been as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.

Because of statewide winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution . . .

2 recent presidents entered office without winning the most national popular votes.

A Democrat has won the national popular vote in 7 out of the last 8 elections. 5 of the last 6.
We've spent 12 of the last 22 years with a Republican in office.

5 of our 46 Presidents have come into office without having won the most popular votes nationwide.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight calculated in early September 2020 that for Joe Biden to have just a 50-50 chance of becoming President, he needed to win the national popular vote by at least 3% (over 3 million votes).

A 1% lead in the national popular vote would have given Biden only a 6% chance of becoming President. A 2% lead would have given him only a 22% chance.

Another study showed, in general, there was a 45% chance that a close presidential election could end with the winner of less popular votes becoming President.

Another study warned that 1 out of every 3 presidential elections where the popular vote margin is within 3% will feature a mismatch between the popular vote and the electoral college.

There were several scenarios in which a candidate could have won the presidency in 2020 with fewer popular votes than their opponents. It would have reduced turnout more, if more voters realized their votes do not matter.

Minority and youth voting have dropped significantly. Since 2008, Black voting in states dominated by Democrats has increased by 1.8 points; in Republican-dominated states it has dropped by four points. In Georgia, Black participation rates dropped from 47.8% to 43.2% between 2018 and 2022. Hispanic participation dropped from 27.6% to 25.1%, and the youth vote dropped from 33% to 26%. – Elias

Because of the state-by-state winner-take-all electoral votes laws (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most popular votes in each state) and (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states),a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide. It has occurred in 5 of the nation's 60 (8%) presidential elections.

The precariousness of the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes is highlighted by the fact that a difference of a few thousand voters in one, two, or three states would have elected the second-place candidate in 5 of the 17 presidential elections since World War II. Near misses are now frequently common. There have been 9 consecutive non-landslide presidential elections since 1988.

537 popular votes won Florida and the White House for Bush in 2000 despite Gore's lead of 537,179 (1,000 times more) popular votes nationwide.

A difference of 59,393 voters in Ohio in 2004 would have defeated President Bush despite his nationwide lead of over 3 million votes.

In 2012, a shift of 214,733 popular votes in four states would have elected Mitt Romney, despite President Obama’s nationwide lead of 4,966,945 votes.
Nate Silver calculated that "Mitt Romney may have had to win the national popular vote by three percentage points … to be assured of winning the Electoral College."


In 2016, Trump became President even though Clinton won the national popular vote by 2,868,686 votes.
Trump won the Presidency because he won Michigan by 11,000 votes, Wisconsin by 23,000 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes.
Each of these 78,000 votes was 36 times more important than Clinton's nationwide lead of 2,868,686 votes.

A different choice by 5,229 voters in Arizona (11 electors), 5,890 in Georgia (16), and 10,342 in Wisconsin (10) would have defeated Biden -- despite Biden's nationwide lead of more than 7 million. The Electoral College would have tied 269-269. Congress would have decided the election, regardless of the popular vote in any state or throughout the country.
Each of these 21,461 voters was 329 times more important than the more than 7 million.

The national popular vote winner also would have been defeated by a shift of 9,246 votes in 1976; 53,034 in 1968; 9,216 in 1960; 12,487 in 1948; 1,711 votes in 1916, 524 in 1884, 25,069 in 1860, 17,640 in 1856, 6,773 in 1848, 2,554 in 1844, 14,124 in 1836.

After the 2012 election, Nate Silver calculated that "Mitt Romney may have had to win the national popular vote by three percentage points on Tuesday to be assured of winning the Electoral College."

According to Tony Fabrizio, pollster for the Trump campaign, Trump’s narrow victory in 2016 was due to 5 counties in 2 states (not CA or NY).