Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Structure, History, and Culture"
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| [a] Votes RF
This is one post in a multi-part series on the American Electoral College. Click below for the others.
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The election is over, and the electoral college and popular vote held to their (mostly) in-step ways. The vast majority of presidential election winners have won both, even though only the electoral college "counts." The few times that it has split have led to fairly enormous stress, and even significant legal challenges. The vast majority of elections, however, have elected presidents with majorities (or at least pluralities) in what we often think of as "both forms" of voting. I call them "structural forms" of voting.
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| [b] Proportional RF |
Winner wins both. No contest.
With that in mind, let's get back to our fictional example of Arizowashinginia, with its 7.5 million citizens and ten congressional districts. It has twelve electoral votes (one for every 750,000 citizens and two more representing the state as a whole). 10+2=12. This is the key structural unit of all electoral politics. Just for the moment, let's assume that the only state that matters in our current hypothetical example is Arizowashinginia. Everything else is tied (we'll assume).
Both sides work as hard as they can, and one wins by about the same number of people standing and cheering for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on a Saturday afternoon in South Bend, Indiana. Candidate One gets about 60,000 more votes than Candidate Two. It is close. Some people call the margin "razor thin." In terms of vote-counting (think about Suzy here), there is almost no difference...except for the structure of the election itself.
You see, Candidate One wins twelve electoral votes. Period.
Think about that for a second. What if the difference is within a percentage point, such as 50.4%-49.6%? Shouldn't the electoral votes be divided somewhere along the lines of 7-5...or even 6.2-5.8? Should it be proportional?
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| [c] Split RF |
Well, maybe it should be, but you can't spell "lose" without "should"...well, sort of (I'd like to buy a vowel). Here's the point. Proportionality is not the structure candidates need to negotiate.
Winner-takes-all: that's the structure.
This may not have great consequences in the smallest states—those with three, four, or five electoral votes. The poor little Plutos like North Dakota, Alaska, and Rhode Island have more senators than representatives (they don't even have 750,000 citizens from border to border, so they just get a single "representative-at-large"). They have two senators and one representative...and three electoral votes. If a candidate wins by a few hundred popular votes, s/he will pocket all three electoral votes. Fair enough...or is it? A few thousand vote margin in the little state gets you three electoral votes; a much smaller percentage in a larger state gets you twelve.
What's up with that?
We've seen the implications for Arizowashinginia. The winner receives twelve electoral votes. They may be split almost 50-50 in votes and even among their elected representatives. They might have five Democrats, five Republicans, and a senator from each party. One candidate may win a bare majority...or even a mere plurality. S/he still wins twelve electoral votes. Look at it this way. The blue candidate wins Arizowashinginia by a slim margin and the red candidate wins North Delakotalaska by a landslide. Here's how it looks:
State Blue Red Electoral Count
Arizowashinginia 50.1 49.9 12
North Delakotalaska 68.9 31.1 3
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| [d] States of purple RF |
So far, it's really not that bad. Arizowsashinginia has many more voters than North Delakotalaska. The bigger problem is really the former, because "red" loses twelve votes by just a sliver of motivated voters, while North Delakotalaska wasn't even close (and the stakes are quite small). Why should a tiny victory in the medium-sized state give the (bare) winner twelve whole votes (out of 538)? Is that fair?
No, but it's certainly the structure.
Your job (if you are Eric Fernstrom or David Axelrod) is to negotiate it, and that little state might just make all of the difference (Al Gore could have finished the deal in 2000 with any number of little states—including New Hampshire).
Oh, so close, Justice Scalia. So close.
And we haven't even begun to consider big states. What happens if you clear, say, California by a little strip of 100,000 votes (about the capacity of the Rose Bowl)? Well, you are going to get a whopping fifty-five electoral votes. Yup, fifty-five. What if you happen to be capable of winning most of New York City and holding your own in the vast territories of upstate New York? Even if you only win by the number of people in the New Year's countdown crowd in Times Square, you get...twenty-nine more. What do we call that? What do we call someone who has eighty-four electoral votes even before things get fully underway?
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| [e] More-or-less tied RF |
We shall call you Democrat.
There is only one thing that can be done. In order to call you Republican, I will give you Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska (fifty-five) and then Mississippi Alabama, and Georgia (thirty-one). In other words, Republican friend, you lead 86-84...and we have barely even started.
So what we see is a core of states that are in the bank on both sides. To be just a little bit disingenuous (making it seem quite a bit easier than it really is), there are approximately 150 electoral votes beyond dispute for each candidate. California, Washington, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, and New York (among others) cancel out South Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Idaho, Louisiana, West Virginia (and others). In other words, the bare starting point, depending on the candidates, is that there are approximately 250 electoral votes left...even before you start (even without running a single advertisement in any of them).
Let's go further.
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| [f] Swing RF |
Even beyond the sure-things (Wyoming is not going for a Democrat anytime soon), there is another inner core of states that "lean strongly" toward either party. This means that the candidates watch them, and sometimes worry about how they will twist and turn four, eight, twelve...or twenty years from now. These states would be Oregon and Minnesota (Democrats) and Arizona and Georgia (Republicans). Let's color them medium-blue and medium-red.
Beyond that, there is even another layer. These are the light blues (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) and light reds (North Carolina and maybe Indiana or Missouri). These are monitored much more carefully, and there is actually quite a bit of heavy spending in them; if they were to "flip" (as North Carolina and Indiana did in 2008), it could be diastrous for the party's strategy. Working hard to hold or flip them is the focus of most tacticians.
Still...nothing compares to "swing states." Nothing.
They ebb and flow; they weave and wind. These states get pummeled with advertisements, candidates spend inordinate amounts of time in them, and the national media camp reporters there for well over a year in advance of elections. This is serious stuff.
We shall call those Ohio, Florida, and (sometimes) Iowa and New Hampshire. We shall color them gray (grey), and we shall keep our crayons handy.
We'll consider them tomorrow. We shall call our work political ethanol-ogy. Sort of.
This is one post in a multi-part series on the American Electoral College. Click below for the others.
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