Beefalow and the Consumer
Beef
Junior Chimp
Posts: 9,123
Political Matrix
E: -2.77, S: -8.78
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« on: August 23, 2016, 09:48:40 AM » |
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Silly post, not serious, take with a grain of salt.
I did an analysis of the states either party needs to get to 100, 200, and 270 EVs, and the number of total votes that would typically take. I used the 2012 election as my model for vote totals - this is imperfect of course, as contested states would logically have a higher turnout, but it gives a ballpark figure. I also didn't consider NE and ME splitting, because all of either state falls on the Dem side or the GOP side.
Anyway, let's look at what it takes for a Democrat to get to 270 EVs:
State, total vote
DC 293,764
Hawaii 434,697
Maryland 2,707,327
Rhode Island 446,049
Massachusetts 3,167,767
Vermont 299,290
California 13,055,815
New York 7,081,536
Approximate popular votes needed to get to 100 EVs: 13,743,123
Illinois 5,251,432
Connecticut 1,558,993
Washington 3,145,958
Delaware 413,921
New Jersey 3,651,140
Michigan 4,745,316
Oregon 1,789,270
Minnesota 2,936,561
Approximate popular votes needed to get to 200 EVs: 25,489,418
Maine 713,180
New Mexico 783,757
New Hampshire 710,972
Wisconsin 3,068,434
Virginia 3,854,489
Pennsylvania 5,755,620
Colorado 2,571,846 <-- Tipping point
Approximate popular votes needed to get to 270 EVs: 34,218,567
Now, let's get a Republican to 270 EVs:
Idaho 656,742
Wyoming 249,061
Oklahoma 1,334,872
Utah 1,020,861
Alabama 2,074,338
West Virginia 672,119
Kentucky 1,798,048
Kansas 1,157,532
Tennessee 2,460,904
Nebraska 794,379
Louisiana 1,994,065
North Dakota 322,627
South Dakota 363,815
Arkansas 1,069,468
Texas 7,999,657
Approximate popular votes needed to get to 100 EVs: 11,984,244
GOP advantage: 1,758,879 votes (6.84%)
South Carolina 1,964,118
Alaska 300,495
Mississippi 1,285,584
Indiana 2,633,143
Montana 484,484
Missouri 2,763,689
Georgia 3,908,369
Arizona, NE-2 2,306,559
North Carolina 4,505,372
Approximate popular votes needed to get to 200 EVs: 22,060,151
GOP advantage: 3,429,268 votes (7.21%)
Ohio 5,590,934
Florida 8,492,175
Nevada 1,014,918
Iowa 1,582,180
Colorado 2,571,846 <-- Tipping point
Approximate popular votes needed to get to 200 EVs: 31,686,177
GOP advantage: 2,532,390 votes (3.84%)
The main reason for this disparity is that there are more states along the GOP path than on the Democrat path, giving the GOP a "Senatorial bonus." Voters in small states have more power than those in large states.
This played out in 2000. It probably would play out in a lot of close elections, if not for the fact that the Democrats have several large states that vote overwhelmingly for them, padding their national numbers.
Of course, this is all highly unrealistic, since no candidate is going to win half the vote in states that total 270 EVs, and no votes at all everywhere else. So I created a hypothetical election in which each candidate got 60% of the vote in states totaling 100 EVs, 55% in states in the next 100 EVs, and 52% in the remaining states (except tipping point CO, which I split evenly). What I got was the following:
To get to 100:
Democrats: 26,079,142
Republicans: 25,375,591
Advantage: 703,551 (1.37%)
To get to 200:
Democrats: 48,068,383
Republicans: 47,030,754
Advantage: 1,037,629 (1.09%)
To get to 270:
Democrats: 66,387,684
Republicans: 65,421,805
Advantage: 965,879 (0.73%)
So it would appear that in a fairly even election, the Republicans still have a three quarters of one percent advantage in the Electoral College. That's not insignificant.
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