So, I was just wondering:

Our presidential electoral system is kind of weird, and some of its weirdness is based on the idea that it’s valuable to apportion some amount of Electoral College representation based simply on statehood, without regard to population. This means that even the tiniest “state” gets a minimum of 3 EC votes, even if it’s only got a single Representative in the House. It’s probably not absurd to handle Congress this way, given the separation of powers between the Senate and the House, but it’s far from clear that this is a good idea for Presidential elections.

Because low-population, largely rural states are overwhelmingly conservative, this tends to give a small electoral advantage to Republicans. I wondered, then, what if the Electoral College was concerned ONLY with population-based representation? We’d still have the all-or-nothing state-by-state EC system, but without the Senate-based distortion. How might this affect recent races?

In this world, the smallest number of EC electors is 1, not 3 (I’ve given DC 1, since it currently has 3, but has about half the population of another 3-EV state, Montana.) Instead of 538, candidates vie for 436 (435 House members + 1 for DC). The magic number is 219, not 270.

So then came the math. It turns out to be pretty easy to do this, since Wikipedia has all the data a mouse click away. I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that this “New Math” can only affect races where (a) the winner has more states than the loser and (b) the difference in states won is greater than half the electoral college margin of victory. Only one race in the last 50 years would be affected by this, and it’s the same one where we sent the guy with fewer popular votes to Washington. Go figure.

• 2008: It’s not even close, but let’s look anyway. Obama won 365 electoral votes, and McCain 173 — a margin of 68% to 32% in the Electoral College. Obama won 29 states; McCain 22. If we reduce each candidate’s total by (states * 2), the adjusted score is 307 to 129, and the margin of victory changes to 70% to 30%. For 2008, then, the extra weight given to small states wasn’t that big of a factor.

• 2004: Bush won 286 EV, 53% of the EC, and 31 states; Kerry won 251, 47%, and 20. If we apply the same math here, we get Bush 224, Kerry 211, and no electoral change (though a narrower EC race at 51% to 49%). Bush took a 62 EV hit, and Kerry 40, but the real-world margin was too much for the state adjustment to flip the race. The state margin (11) is far less than half the EV margin (40, half of which is 20).

• 2000: Here’s the money shot. Bush won 271 (30 states, and a hair over 50% of the EC) to Gore’s 266 (21 and 49%) (yes, we’re missing an elector because of the rogue dude in Minnesota who voted for John Edwards). Eliminating the small states’ advantage drops Bush to 211, below Gore’s adjusted store of 224 and flipping this hypothetical race even with Bush carrying Florida. As predicted, the difference in states won (30 – 21 = 9) is more than 1/2 the Electoral Margin (271 – 266 = 5).

With that in hand, let’s delve further. Needing the race to be close to be worth analyzing pushes us pretty far back. Clinton won about 70% of the EC in both his elections; George Herbert Walker Bush won with 79%. Reagan famously waltzed off with 91% in ’80 and 98% in ’84. With EC margins like that, the Senatorial noise becomes immaterial.

• 1976: Carter, though, was somewhat closer with 55% of the EC in 1976, 297 to 240 for Gerry Ford. However, Carter won fewer states (24 to 27), so the race can’t flip (just to be clear: it means Ford would take a bigger EV adjustment than Carter).

• Nixon’s 1968 run was also close, with about 56%, but the peculiarities of the year save him: first, he won 32 states and bagged 301 EV — but most significantly the opposition vote was split by Humphrey (Dem, 191 EV, 14 states) and George Wallace (46 EV, 5 states). Ding Nixon his 64 votes and he’s still above the real-world totals of his opponents, so no change here, either.

• We have to go to 1960 for another “close” race: JFK won with 303, 22 states, and 56% of the EV compared to Nixon’s 219 and 26 states. (Harry Byrd won some votes that year, plus we’re far enough back the the total is actual 537, not 538, hence the funny totals.) Again, we can’t flip the race with the new math because (a) the margin’s too big and (b) JFK won with fewer states.

And all of a sudden we’re back in the 1950s. Actually, the forties; the 1948 race was relatively close, but not enough to get interesting. Truman won 303 electoral votes and 28 states; Dewey bagged only 189 and 16 (Strom Thurmond picked up 39 and 4), so no flip here, either.

To find another candidate for adjustment we have to jump back to 1916, with Woodrow Wilson vs. Charles Hughes. Wilson got 277 EV and 30 states; Hughes got 254 and 18. The key rule is, again, if the difference in states is more than 1/2 the EV margin; the state difference is 12, and the EV margin is 23, so we’d expect the adjustment to flip the election. Wilson’s 277 less (2 x 30) is 217; Hughes’ 254 less (2 x 18) is 218, and all of a sudden there’s a new President for the First World War.

It’s clear that the EC kept the popular vote winner from the White House in 2000. It’s interesting to see that a small change to the EV system would rectify that; however, it’s also obvious that the barrier to entry on such a change (depending as it does on supermajority (2/3) votes in both houses of Congress PLUS ratification by 75% of the states) will keep this exercise firmly in the realm of the theoretical.