Thursday, December 02, 2004

Electoral Vote Floor Effect

I've been doing a little math (and a lot of formatting) and I was fascinated by the floor effect of the current electoral vote system. This would not have affected the past election, but it certainly would have affected the strategy by each of the teams.


State Population EV EV/Pop Vote
Texas 22,118,509 34 0.0000015 Rep
California 35,484,453 55 0.0000015 Dem
Florida 17,019,068 27 0.0000016 Rep
New York 19,190,115 31 0.0000016 Dem
Illinois 12,653,544 21 0.0000017 Dem
Michigan 10,079,985 17 0.0000017 Dem
Pennsylvania 12,365,455 21 0.0000017 Dem
Georgia 8,684,715 15 0.0000017 Rep
New Jersey 8,638,396 15 0.0000017 Dem
Ohio 11,435,798 20 0.0000017 Rep
Virginia 7,386,330 13 0.0000018 Rep
Indiana 6,195,643 11 0.0000018 Rep
NC 8,407,248 15 0.0000018 Rep
Arizona 5,580,811 10 0.0000018 Rep
Washington 6,131,445 11 0.0000018 Dem
Maryland 5,508,909 10 0.0000018 Dem
Wisconsin 5,472,299 10 0.0000018 Dem
MA 6,433,422 12 0.0000019 Dem
Tennessee 5,841,748 11 0.0000019 Rep
Missouri 5,704,484 11 0.0000019 Rep
SC 4,147,152 8 0.0000019 Rep
Kentucky 4,117,827 8 0.0000019 Rep
Oregon 3,559,596 7 0.0000020 Dem
Minnesota 5,059,375 10 0.0000020 Dem
Colorado 4,550,688 9 0.0000020 Rep
Oklahoma 3,511,532 7 0.0000020 Rep
Alabama 4,500,752 9 0.0000020 Rep
Louisiana 4,496,334 9 0.0000020 Rep
Connecticut 3,483,372 7 0.0000020 Dem
Mississippi 2,881,281 6 0.0000021 Rep
Utah 2,351,467 5 0.0000021 Rep
Arkansas 2,725,714 6 0.0000022 Rep
Kansas 2,723,507 6 0.0000022 Rep
Nevada 2,241,154 5 0.0000022 Rep
Iowa 2,944,062 7 0.0000024 Rep
New Mexico 1,874,614 5 0.0000027 Rep
WV 1,810,354 5 0.0000028 Rep
Nebraska 1,739,291 5 0.0000029 Rep
Idaho 1,366,332 4 0.0000029 Rep
Maine 1,305,728 4 0.0000031 Dem
NH 1,287,687 4 0.0000031 Dem
Hawaii 1,257,608 4 0.0000032 Dem
Montana 917,621 3 0.0000033 Rep
Delaware 817,491 3 0.0000037 Dem
Rhode Island 1,076,164 4 0.0000037 Dem
South Dakota 764,303 3 0.0000039 Rep
Alaska 648,813 3 0.0000046 Rep
Vermont 609,890 3 0.0000049 Rep
DC 574,096 3 0.0000052 Dem
Wyoming 495,304 3 0.0000061 Rep

.

Yes, these are not voting populations, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that an equal percentage of voters vote in each states. Because each of the states must have a minimum of 3 electoral votes, citizens in very small states have a much greater effect on the election than those in large states do. For instance, my vote is worth (in electoral votes) roughly 1/2 of a person's vote in Delaware, almost 1/3 as much as someone from Alaska and nearly 1/4th as much as someone from Wyoming! It is possible to say that those from smaller states (14 out of the bottom 20 least populous states voted Republican) have far more a say in the election than those in the top ten in population (5 out of the top 10 voted Republican). It did not make a difference this time (a reweighted measure came up with 279 to 259 (approximately, due to rounding error)), but it certainly does make an interesting case for electoral college elimination/reform. It also says that in the current environment, simply writing off a large amount of the smaller states (which the Democrats did) is a real mistake.

UPDATED: Added a link, some grammar and the caveat about voting population.

UPDATED AGAIN: Needed to fix layout in IE.


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