Winning a presidential election with a smaller electoral than vote share

[President Johnson]

If I'm not mistaken, never did a winning presidential candidate win a smaller percentage of the electoral vote than the popular vote share. Not even in 1824, 1876, 1916 or 2000. I wonder whether there is a realistic scenario this happens in the future?

I think it's actually possible given how the electoral map looks today. But only for a Democratic candidate, since a Republican winning the popular vote would exceed 300 electoral votes easily; and that's already 55% of electoral votes. On the other hand, if you take Georgia, Arizona and Nevada out of Joe Biden's column, that reduces his electoral count to 273, which is 50.7% of available electoral votes. His popular vote share remains slightly over 51% if Trump won all these states by a very narrow margin or if Biden gets more extra raw votes in California and New York.

Thoughts?

[Skill and Chance]

This is a very plausible 2024 Harris win with more than 50.74% of the PV

[dkxdjy]

Yeah it definitely seems like a possibility though it's understandable that it hasn't happened yet. I think the way to look at it is that you have this baseline electoral college result (when popular vote is even, someone will win the electoral college anyway), and as the popular vote shifts slightly in some direction some states flip and you get electoral votes that move from one candidate to the other, and these electoral vote shifts happen at a rate faster than the popular vote shifts. This explains why the electoral college usually exaggerates the sizes of victories, but it's plausible for there to be elections in the future in which the electoral college is sizably biased against the winning candidate, who wins a relatively large percentage of votes but is barely able to flip enough states to make it across the finish line.

[Orser67]

This scenario got me interested so I did a little digging historically. It did technically happen a couple times (1796 and 1800), though both cases were before the popular vote was used by every state except South Carolina starting with the 1832 election (and to be clear, only a few states used the popular vote in 1796/1800). A couple other close cases were 1824 (where Jackson won a plurality of the electoral and popular vote but lost the contingent election to Adams) and 1876 (Tilden won 50.9% of the vote and 49.9% of the EC in an extremely controversial election; if Tilden had won a disputed electoral vote in Oregon he would have qualified). 1976, 2004, and 2020 were all pretty close, but none of them would qualify just by swinging a few non-tipping point states. I think it would likely have happened in 1836 with a three-point uniform swing away from Van Buren, though it would require a contingent election.

Anyway, I think this is very plausible in the next few elections, so long as Republicans retain an advantage in the EC, the country remains fairly closely split between the two parties, and the third party share stays under 3% or so. Skill and Chance's map is one route, but any winning Democratic map under ~280 electoral votes (which is just over 52% of the electoral vote) could get you there, and there are whole bunch of ways doing that by flipping some combination of the eight states where the margin was within five points in 2020.

[Non Swing Voter]

This is a very plausible 2024 Harris win with more than 50.74% of the PV

It's kind of crazy to me that Kamala can win with basically just the Dem base states + GA, NC, and AZ.  The GOP's current coalition isn't sustainable even this decade.

[Chips]

This is a very plausible 2024 Harris win with more than 50.74% of the PV

Plausible.

[Oregon Eagle Politics]

This is a very plausible 2024 Harris win with more than 50.74% of the PV

It's kind of crazy to me that Kamala can win with basically just the Dem base states + GA, NC, and AZ.  The GOP's current coalition isn't sustainable even this decade.

IMO NV, NH, and MN are not Dem base states and could narrow up with the right candidate.

[Sir Mohamed]

Never thought about this and I'm surprised that actually never happened in 59 elections 4 prez.

In 2024 or 2028, the above map or these 2 below is possible, with Harris winning the NPV 51.5-47%.




This one is with Josh Shapiro as VP candidate, who was elected PA-Gov:

[Wormless Gourd]

A Romney '12 victory would've been one.
Tipping point of CO was +5.37% Obama.
A +5.37% universal swing on top of the 47.20% Romney PV = 52.57% of the PV, but only 51.11% of the electoral college.

[DS0816]

If I'm not mistaken, never did a winning presidential candidate win a smaller percentage of the electoral vote than the popular vote share. Not even in 1824, 1876, 1916 or 2000. I wonder whether there is a realistic scenario this happens in the future?

I think it's actually possible given how the electoral map looks today. But only for a Democratic candidate, since a Republican winning the popular vote would exceed 300 electoral votes easily; and that's already 55% of electoral votes. On the other hand, if you take Georgia, Arizona and Nevada out of Joe Biden's column, that reduces his electoral count to 273, which is 50.7% of available electoral votes. His popular vote share remains slightly over 51% if Trump won all these states by a very narrow margin or if Biden gets more extra raw votes in California and New York.

Thoughts?

Close to this was Election 2000.

Had Republican presidential pickup winner George W. Bush also won the U.S. Popular Vote, he would have prevailed over Democratic nominee Al Gore by +2 percentage points.

In U.S. presidential elections in which there is a party switch, the Republican or Democratic pickup winner tends to gain approximately +1 to +1.5 (usually closer to +1) states with each percentage point nationally shifted in that direction. (For an outcome as suggested by this topic, it would more likely happen with an election cycle switching the White House party.)

In 1996, losing Republican nominee Bob Dole’s U.S. Popular Vote percentage-points margin was –8.52. 2000 Republican presidential pickup winner George W. Bush flipped +11 states—Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia—but nationally shifted only +8.00 points to finish with –0.52. Normal pattern would have had Bush reach +2. Bush’s electoral-vote score was 271. That is 50.37 percent of the total allocation of 538. (With re-election in 2004, Bush received in the U.S. Popular Vote 50.73 percent. His margin: +2.46.)

The two-party vote in 2000 reached only 96.25. Usually it ends p between 97 to 99 percent—with the remainder combined for candidates outside the two major U.S. political parties. So, a 2000 Bush could have otherwise received 50.38 percent in the U.S. Popular Vote and 50.37 percent (271) of electoral votes.

This example may fit enough with your topic.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

278 map with or without GA or AZ that is Biden or Harris path to victory

Voters are gonna get impatient with Covid Eradication like they did with Trump, what effect that have on 2022/2024 we don't know yet