The Electoral College does not help small states
Busting a common myth popular on both sides of the debate.
I think one of the most common things I’ve heard from both those attacking and those defending the Electoral College is that the Electoral College gives small states disproportionate power. The Founding Fathers did not expect the Electoral College to favor small states, and I will give fourreasons based on the results of presidential elections why it does not.
Those extra two votes almost never matter.
Presidential candidates pay more attention to larger states.
Successful candidates usually come from large states.
Almost every close election has been decided by a narrow margin in large states.
Those speaking out against the Electoral College say it is obviously unfair that a voter in a small state has more of a say over who becomes president than a voter in a large state.
Those speaking out in favor of the Electoral College say this is a wise and necessary way of protecting the interests of those who live in small states, by insuring that presidential candidates pay attention to small states.
It is true that the Electoral College gives voters in different states different amounts of power; it does not empower small-state voters, however.
Among experts who do research on the detailed nuts and bolts of how the Electoral College actually works, this is not an unusual opinion. Mathematical models have supported the claim that Electoral College system favors large states over small states. Not all experts believe all of the same things about the Electoral College, but even if the mathematical models can get complex, the historical record is clear.
1. Those extra two votes almost never matter.
Every state gets a number of electors equal to the number of people in its Congressional delegation. This means two free “Senate” electors plus a variable number of “House” electors based on population. Both Wyoming and California get the same two bonus electors.
How important have those electors been? Well, if you go back through all of the presidential elections that have ever happened, and take those two bonus electors away from each state, there are only three elections in which the result could change.
The first time was the 1796 election, held under the pre-12th Amendment version of the system, in which the Electoral College functioned completely differently from how it operates today. The second and third times happened in the 2000 and 1876 elections. Not coincidentally, these elections were close enough that their results were uncertain and therefore controversial.
Arguably, the 1796 election was decided by the large battleground state of New York, whose state legislature ultimately selected pro-Adams electors. In the case of 1876, the three states whose electors were contested — South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida —ranged from medium to small in size. The 2000 election hinged on the results in a single large swing state — Florida.
In two out of the three elections where the bonus “senator” electors mattered, the election was also arguably decided by a single large battleground state.
2. Presidential candidates pay more attention to larger states.
Presidential campaigns focus narrowly on battleground states. Which states are battleground states? Once we ask this question enough times (the answer varies over time) it starts to become clear that while not all battleground states are large states and not all large states are battleground states, large states are disproportionately likely to be battleground states.
Most recently, in 2012 and 2016, the presidential campaign — campaign events attended by presidential and vice presidential candidates as well as advertisements — has been concentrated in about a dozen “battleground” states.
In both 2012 and 2016, this included six of the twelve largest states. A majority of the presidential campaign effort took place in the three states that were most competitive out of those twelve largest states.
Only three out of the twenty-six smallest states made the list of “battleground” states that presidential candidates campaigned in: Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Note that these three were all early states in the party primary system, and therefore occupy a special role in presidential politics outside of the Electoral College.
Even in 2008, when candidate Barack Obama launched an ambitiously broad “fifty state strategy,” the vast majority of campaign activity and spending was concentrated in large states.
3. Presidents come from larger states
Presidential campaigns have changed quite a bit over the years, but large states have always been disproportionately important. For example, some candidates have run a “front porch campaign” where they did not personally travel. The most famous of these candidates usually came from a large battleground state. This brings us to an interesting point: Presidents mostly come from larger states.
If we presume that candidates look after the interests of their home state, it is worth noting that a majority of presidents came from four large states: Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio. (Virginia and Massachusetts used to be large, but are now medium-sized. The first Virginian president came from a state that included what is now West Virginia and Kentucky; the first Massachusetts president came from a state that included what is now Maine.)
Even the candidates who came from small states often launched their political career from a larger state. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, but ran for office in Illinois. Only two successful presidential candidates held office in a small state: Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire in 1852, and Bill Clinton of Arkansas in 1992.
The only part of the presidential campaign process where the presidential campaigns pay disproportionate attention to small states is during the party primaries — not because of the Electoral College — and in those cases, only a key selection of small states exercise truly disproportionate influence (particularly Iowa and New Hampshire).
4. Almost every close election has been decided by a narrow margin in large states.
Most people would tell you that in 2000, a narrow margin in a single large state (Florida) decided the entire election. 2000 is not simply an example of the bonus “Senate votes” mattering, but also an example of the great power of a single large battleground state at the political “tipping point” of the United States. It’s also an example of how a small battleground state can fail to be decisive, even in a very close election.
A little-remembered fact about the 2000 election was that New Mexico also had a razor-thin margin of less than a thousand votes in 2000. Very few people cared, because New Mexico didn’t have enough electoral votes to swing the election the way that Florida did. In 1876, however, all three contested tipping-point states were small — either South Carolina, Louisiana, or Florida alone could swing the election to Tilden.
Before 1828, when the Electoral College was still evolving, the state legislature of New York could be seen as pivotal in a number of elections, and possibly Pennsylvania as well; both were generally swing states in this early period.
From 1828 forwards, the modern Electoral College system has given two uncertain elections (1876 and 2000) and nine other elections in which a tipping-point state was large enough by itself to swing the results in the Electoral College.
1836 and 1848: Pennsylvania, at the time the second-largest state.
1844, 1860, 1880, 1884, and 1888: New York, then the largest state.
1916: California, twelfth-largest (arguably medium-sized at the time).
2004: Ohio, seventh-largest state.
Corrupt political machines tended to run the show in New York elections in the later half of the 19th century, so the numerous cases where New York was decisive are actually a little bit disturbing.
Even for the close elections where it is difficult to identify a single decisive state, the easiest path to contesting the results of a presidential election has usually been contesting the results in 2–3 key states that are medium or large. As in the case of 2000, a close result in a small state is usually considered irrelevant.
For example, in the 1960 election, unhappy Republicans said that Texas and Illinois (Chicago in particular) had been decided by fraud, giving Kennedy the win over Nixon. These were two large states with relatively narrow margins. There were other narrowly decided states in 1960, but conventional wisdom on the election is that those two states were indeed crucial to Kennedy’s victory.
In 2016, unhappy Democrats pointed towards Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where some of the narrowest margins in the country gave Trump enough electoral votes to win over Clinton. Experts again largely agree with this analysis.
I can and have looked at every close election, and over and over again, large states are crucial. Let’s look at that picture again, more carefully:
There have been very few cases where we could argue that small states, either individually or collectively, decided the result of the Electoral College. It clearly did happen once, in 1876. It arguably may have happened in 2000 and 1796, but one large battleground state played an obvious and important role in both of those elections.
The Framers expected a large state advantage
As I mentioned, the Founding Fathers expected the Electoral College to tilt the balance in favor of large states.
In order to satisfy small-state advocates like Roger Sherman, they did add one feature that favored small states in the presidential election system: The House contingent election process. Small states do have a disproportionate advantage if the election gets thrown into the House of Representatives, where a “one vote, one state” rule is used. This is rare, but it has happened twice (the 1800 and 1824 elections).
Similar thinking motivated one of the more obscure rules in the Electoral College: Electors cannot vote for two candidates from their own home state.
Many of the Framers expected that the Electoral College would nominate candidates, and the House would decide between them. They didn’t expect candidates to win majorities in the Electoral College frequently; George Mason went as far as to estimate the House would decide nineteen out of every twenty presidential elections.
What the Framers did not anticipate were national political parties that would be able to coordinate support on a national level.
A final word
Other than 1876, plus arguably 1796 and 2000, every other close election has hinged on key medium and large states — mostly very large states, particularly New York. This is an entirely understandable outcome when you approach the problem from a mathematical perspective, as I did before I looked carefully into the historical record of the Electoral College. Which large states have decisive influence has varied over time, but large states always matter in the Electoral College.
Because elections usually hinge on key large states, presidential candidates pay disproportionate attention to those key large states. Battleground states are disproportionately likely to be large states and disproportionately unlikely to be small states, which means that most large states are not ignored but most small states are ignored.
So: The Electoral College does not give small states much power, nor does it encourage presidential candidates to cater to the interest of small states in general. The Electoral College does give some (though not all) large states significant power, and encourages presidential candidates to cater to the largest battleground states while ignoring most of the country.