Reply #14: I went through the numbers of each state... [View All]

[cascadiance]

And assuming one would divide up the electoral votes purely on percentage of state vote where fractions over .5 get the whole vote I came up with the following numbers. Keep in mind that there are still situations where the combinations of third party votes and the neither major candidate getting over half of the votes needed for the remaining elector leave some votes dangling to be decided by a tiebreaker. I found that three states had nebulous situations like that (California, Massachussetts, and New York), all coincidentally "blue" states.

And also note that each state, even if they divide up their electors, use criteria not necessarily with the above rules, which probably favor Democrats. Note that in Maine, even though they divide up their electors, it is still decided within "districts", so that though Bush might have gotten 2 of the 4 votes if was a statewide percentage, he didn't get any in this election. If the same logic were applied in other red states, Bush would still get most or all of the votes in those states too.

Last election actual results:

Electoral College:
Bush - 286 votes (53.15985%)
Kerry - 252 votes (46.84015%)

Actual votes:
Bush - 62040606 (51%)
Kerry - 59028109 (48%)

If we had this "percentage" rule in place and assuming the best outcome for Kerry:

If it were only the top four states (Kerry losing 11 votes):

Electoral College:
Bush - 297 votes (55.20446%)
Kerry - 241 votes (44.79554%)

and in worst case if he lost 13 votes:

Electoral College:
Bush - 299 votes (55.57621%)
Kerry - 239 votes (44.42379%)

I went through the rest of the states and used the percentage vote there and got a total of either Kerry picking up 6 or 7 votes (depending on who you gave the remaining Massachussetts vote to with it being tied .44% between the two of them). Therefore if you add the other states, then at best Kerry loses 4 votes and in worst case loses 7 votes. Of course if other states use the "Maine" rules for dividing up votes, it could be a lot worse for Kerry then.

With all states using percentage vote rule:

At best for Kerry:
Bush - 290 votes (53.90335%)
Kerry - 248 votes (46.09665%)

At worst for Kerry:
Bush - 293 votes (54.46097%)
Kerry - 245 votes (45.53903%)

Any way you slice it, the electoral college gives Dems lower percentage of votes than straight election percentage nationally. And sacrificing winner-take-all nationally or in just a few states also adds up to making it worse for Democrats.

Haven't done an analysis of the 2000 election under the same rules, but given that Gore won the popular vote, I would expect the results to be even worse.