POLITICS SEPTEMBER 17, 2011
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This week, Pennsylvania Republicans created a stir by proposing to shift the way the state apportions electoral votes in presidential contests, switching from winner-take-all to the Maine plan, in which one electoral vote is awarded to the winner of each Congressional district, and then two are given to the winner of the state. The proposed Pennsylvania plan is odious because its goal is to tilt the playing field towards Republicans; it reduces the advantage of doing well in a state and therefore, if it’s implemented only in Democratic-leaning states, it would make it very difficult for Democrats to win a closely-contested national election. But thinking about this latest scheme also raises bigger issues about the role of the Electoral College. It reminds us what was worthwhile about the system in the first place—and why a key argument for maintaining it may no longer apply as strongly as it once did.
As currently constituted, the Electoral College system benefits two types of states: big ones, and close ones. That’s because the state winner-take-all mechanism means that winning, say, New Mexico (with its five Electoral Votes) is simply not as big a deal as winning Florida’s 29 votes—so if the polling in both is equally close, campaigns are going to focus on the Sunshine State. On the other hand, campaigns would rather focus on close New Mexico than GOP-lock Texas (38 EVs) or solidly Democratic California (55 EVs).
One of the traditional advantages, then, of the Electoral College is that it would seem to restore some balance to a political system which massively overrepresents small states in the Senate. Nor are states the only issue here. Since, by definition, small states don’t have large cities, the same things that make small states overrepresented in Congress also make cities, and in particular the largest cities, underrepresented. A presidential election scheme that rewards size and two-party competitiveness, then, tends to add balance to the overall system. As the late political scientists Nelson Polsby and Aaron Wildavsky said, “it is not necessarily a loss to have slightly different majorities preponderant in different institutions, but it is definitely a loss to have the same majority preponderant in both political branches while other majorities are frozen out.”
But there’s one catch: Over time, much of the aforementioned advantages conferred by the Electoral College appear to have eroded. The biggest reason for this lies in the changing distribution of strongly partisan states by size, in which bigger states have become less competitive. As a result, the largest states, and most big cities, are no longer the focus of presidential elections.
This wasn’t always the case. Consider New York. It’s hardly a coincidence that New Yorkers used to be on presidential tickets so often. Republicans chose a New Yorker as their presidential or vice-presidential nominee 11 times from 1876 through 1964, while Democrats did it a whopping 13 times from 1868 through 1948. And that’s because New York, then the largest state, was also highly competitive. For example, in 1952 (a year with no Empire State pols on either ticket) Dwight Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson by 11 points nationally—and 12 points in New York. In other words, had the race been very close, New York and its 45 Electoral Votes would have been critical. And New York wasn’t the only big state that was quite competitive. Of the seven states with at least 20 Electoral Votes that year, all seven polled within five points of Eisenhower’s national spread—indicating that if the whole country had shifted towards the Democrats enough to make it a tie election, then the seven largest states would have all been battlegrounds. And as big states went, so went cities. Of the top ten largest cities in the 1950 census, only number nine, Washington (which was disqualified), and number 10, St. Louis, didn’t come from states within that ten point band surrounding Ike’s national margin.
Now, skip ahead to 2008. Barack Obama beat John McCain by about 7 points nationwide—but by 27 points in New York, which hasn’t had anyone on the national ticket since 1964 (except for marginal New Yorker Jack Kemp). Of the seven largest Electoral College states in 2008, only three were within five points of the national results. California, Texas, and New York, with a total of 122 electoral votes in 2012, haven’t been critical states for years. And what of the cities? Instead of the top eight all in competitive states as it was in 1952, hardly any big cities mattered in 2008. Using the 2010 list of largest cities, only number 5, Philadelphia, was in a state that qualified (with perhaps number 6, Phoenix, and maybe number 3, Chicago, at least potentially in play without John McCain and Barack Obama at the top of the ticket).
From the point of view of those of us concerned about the unrepresentative qualities of the senate and the tendency of presidential elections to compensate, this is bad news indeed. As far as I know, however, there’s no systematic reason why things have changed; it could just be a fluke that will reverse itself soon enough. After all, the logic for big states (with their varied interests) tending to be more competitive than small states makes sense, and even now large states still remain somewhat more competitive. It’s hardly impossible to imagine California reverting to the competitive state it was up until the 1990s, or Democratic dreams of a demographic revolution making Texas a swing state coming true. Still, as a long-time reform skeptic, I’m a lot less confident in the benefits of the Electoral College than I once was. And if Republicans (and, perhaps soon, Democrats) are going to exploit Constitutional loopholes when they get the chance the way Pennsylvania lawmakers are threatening to do, then perhaps the current system will be eroded anyway. But whatever other ideas motivate potential changes, reformers would do well to remember that big states and the large cities they hold are otherwise underrepresented, and to make sure, at the very least, that they don’t make things worse.
Jonathan Bernstein blogs at A Plain Blog About Politics.
11 comments
That's like finding out that the Electoral College polls as well as Congress--12%, or a record low. This doesn't get at the larger point that both facts help Republicans, who are now the anti-government party. A party that just wants to blow things up--much like the student body president aspirant who is running to dissolve student government--is popular at first glance but drastically unpopular with subjected to scrutiny. In fact, just like Republicans, such a student has no natural constituency but relies on few choices, low turnout, and miseducated voters going against their own self-interest. Until you get Republicans to realize that the Electoral College harms them (not likely for years, unlike the slowly evident effects of deep Congressional disapproval), very little will change.
- chaitless
September 17, 2011 at 1:08am
The worst legacy of the Electoral College is that it makes presidential elections focus on swing states. Turnout is depressed in places like NYC (50% voter participation in 2008, with <35% in NY9 and about 30% in The Bronx). People think their vote does not matter. Either amend the Constitution to delete the EC, or make every state use the proportional system as Nebraska and Maine do. Winner take all is anti-democracy, as the current system of two-party primary nominations where Iowa and New Hampshire have disproportionate influence.
- K2K
September 17, 2011 at 10:05am
A simpler way would be for several states with a combined 270 EVs to agree to always assign their EVs to the winner of the national popular vote. If California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington all made such an agreement, that would guarantee 281 EVs (and the White House) to the winner of the national popular vote. That's 12 states.
- whyamihere
September 17, 2011 at 1:45pm
A "proportional system" of electoral voteswould be alright K2K, though still a rather inferior version of just a straight up vote. The problem is that Nebraska and Maine have a distict-based system. This hasn't posed major problems for democracy so far, but in places like PA, brutal gerrymandering could lead to Republicans winning the state in the electoral college while losing on votes. That's grossly unfair. Additionally, because Democrats tend to live in clusters, such a system would create systematic distortions in favor of Republicans. If every state were on a Maine and Nebraska system, Bush still would have beaten Gore, Nixon would have beaten Kennedy and Carter and Nixon would have tied, despite the Democrats winning the popular vote in each case.
- WillPastor
September 17, 2011 at 3:52pm
Another problem I have with a "proportional system" of electoral votes is that such a system still includes the distortionary effect of Senate seat allocations. Just about the only ways to achieve "one person, one vote" are to eliminate the Electoral College altogether or have the 12 biggest states pass the Electoral College compact mentioned above.
- whyamihere
September 17, 2011 at 4:51pm
It should simply be eliminated. It's an antidemocratic anachronism and I don't understand why we still have it.
- Sophia
September 17, 2011 at 5:36pm
The district system used by Maine and Nebraska is almost as bad as the winner-take-all system. Instead of battleground states, it would produce battleground districts. Turnout in safe districts would still be terrible, and an electoral vote would be awarded whether a candidate won by one vote or by 400,000 votes so that votes don't really count equally. And if gerrymandering is bad enough now, having electoral votes turn on district lines would only heighten the stakes and the conflict over who votes where. It essentially just transfers the problems of the winner-take-all system to the district level. Small states have plenty of clout in the Senate. The additional benefit the get out of the EC is minimal. As Bernstein points out, urban areas have had their interests ignored for decades. I'm skeptical that going to a direct popular vote would change things all that much in terms of policy, but I favor even a marginal move in the right direction. At least the campaigns could move away from trying to appeal to small numbers of voters in Florida and Ohio who alone could swing the outcome. We can have a national popular vote without amending the Constitution. The Constitution allows states to allocate their electoral votes in any manner their legislatures see fit. If enough states constituting an EV majority enter a compact to give their EVs to the winner of the national popular vote, then they will in essence create a national popular vote system. (Since they would do so only when enough states join the compact, they would continue under the present system for now and lose nothing in the meantime.) More info at http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/index.php.
- dsimon
September 18, 2011 at 9:20am
The advantage to such a compact, dsimon, is that - as I pointed out earlier - you theoretically only need the support of the 12 biggest states to pull it off. The eliminate the Electoral College outright, however, would require the support of 38 states - that is, all but 12.
- whyamihere
September 18, 2011 at 10:07am
*To eliminate the Electoral College outright...
- whyamihere
September 18, 2011 at 10:08am
Agreed with dsimon and whyamihere, the NPV approach is the most promising avenue to rid ourselves of the Electoral College. I have yet to see anyone put forward a convincing argument for why we *should* have the EC. Any system in which Presidential candidates pour more money, time, and campaign promises into Nevada and New Mexico than they do into California and Texas is a stupid system.
- Dausuul
September 18, 2011 at 7:08pm
The PA plan wouldn't just tilt the state towards Republicans, it would give it to Republicans permanently. A democrat could win the popular vote by 1,000,000 and receive about .25 of the EVs for PA because the number of red districts. It's even farther from the purported goal of the electoral college than the electoral college. The EC worked in a time when the population was fairly well distributed geographically, but it serves the exact opposite purpose with today's population concentrations.
- GSpinks
September 19, 2011 at 12:18pm