DETERMINING STATE PREFERENCES FOR THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: 1788-2016.

• Author: Godek, Paul E.
• Position: Report

This article reviews some of the basic institutional elements and empirical regularities of the U.S. electoral college system. Historical election results confirm the expected dominance of the winner-take-all allocation of electors within each state. Of greater interest is the array of state preferences for the electoral college given a national popular vote as the contemplated alternative.

It is necessary to be clear about what is meant by a state's preference. The concept explored here is sometimes referred to as a state's a priori preference. A state prefers a priori the system that results in the greater potential influence of its voters, as represented by the state's popular-vote majority, on the outcome of an election. In this context the term "a priori" means in consideration of only the system itself, without (a posteriori) considerations of actual or likely outcomes in particular elections (see Felsenthal and Machover 2004.) In addition, as discussed below, a state can be said to prefer an institution only in consideration of and relative to a specific alternative institution.

The analysis here demonstrates (contrary to the existing academic literature) that well over half of the states--in particular the smaller population states--prefer the electoral college. (1) The relationship between state population and electoral college preference derives from the fundamental methods--some described in the Constitution, others in century-old laws--for determining the number of congressional representatives (and consequently the number of electoral votes) assigned to each state. In addition, the inverse relationship between state size and electoral college preference, as well as the majority-of-states preference for the system, have existed throughout the entire history of U.S. presidential elections. Those characteristics are certain to persist for the foreseeable future.

An Overview

The election of the U.S. president is determined by a simple majority vote of the electoral college, the members of which are appointed by the states. (2) The Constitution directs that the number of electors for each state shall be "equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." The Constitution also directs that the methods for appointing electors and for directing how those electors cast their votes are to be determined by state legislatures. (3) At first, electors were selected directly by state legislatures, but the transition to some fonn of popular vote to decide the assignation of electors proceeded steadily. By 1836 almost all states had changed from state legislature selection of electors to some form of popular vote selection (see Ross 2012: chap. 2; Miller 2012).

The first electoral college, for the election of 1788, consisted of 69 electors across the 10 states that by then had ratified the Constitution. The electoral college increased in size monotonically, in accordance with the increase in the number of senators and representatives, reaching its current size of 538 with the election of 1964. The number of senators has been at 100 since the admission of Hawaii and Alaska to the Union in 1959. The number of representatives has been capped at 435 since the Apportionment Act of 1911. (4) The District of Columbia has neither senators nor representatives, but was granted three electoral votes in accordance with Amendment XXIII to the Constitution, ratified in 1961. Hence, the current total of 538 electoral votes.

Because every state has two senators and at least one representative, every state has at least three electoral votes. As of 2016 each of the seven smallest states, as well as the District of Columbia, has three electoral votes; the largest state, California, has 55. The median is eight electoral votes. Unless a new state is added or Congress revises the number of representatives (something it has not done in over 100 years), the current total of 538 electoral votes will prevail.

Unanimity versus Maine and Nebraska

Regardless of who was doing the selecting--state legislatures or some subset of the population--electors have been directed, with few exceptions, to cast their state's electoral votes for president unanimously: winner take all. From 1788 through 2016, there have been 58 presidential elections and 2,238 state electoral vote tabulations for the office of president of the United States; 2,186 of the 2,238 tabulations, 97.7 percent, have been unanimous. The lack of unanimity in the 2.3 percent of vote tabulations could have resulted from an explicit nonunanimous allocation method chosen by a state, or from a so-called faithless elector: one who casts a vote in violation of a state's voting rules. (5)

In any case, the dominance of a winner-take-all allocation should not be surprising. Once the majority's preference is determined, that majority would presumably want to maximize the state's influence on the final outcome, which is accomplished with the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes.

Nonetheless, Maine (four electoral votes) and Nebraska (five electoral votes) have opted out of winner take all, in favor of the "congressional district" method. Under that method the popular vote winner in each congressional district receives that district's electoral vote; the popular vote winner in the state receives the two "senatorial" electoral votes. Maine adopted the congressional district method in advance of the 1972 election and Nebraska in advance of the 1992 election. (6)

When a state splits its electoral votes (as both Maine and Nebraska have done), the influence of the state's majority on the outcome of the election is diminished. Thus, whatever the reasons for those two states to have adopted the congressional district method, it is not likely that their example will be followed by any significant number of other states. In sum, the obvious benefit of unanimity explains why so few states have ever chosen the congressional district or any other nonunanimous method for the allocation of their electoral votes.

Electoral College Influence and Popular Vote Influence

Let [e.sub.i] represent the electoral votes in state i, which are all allocated to the winner of the popular vote in the state (with few exceptions, as noted). Thus, each state's proportional contribution to the electoral vote is:

(1) [E.sup.i] = [e.sup.i]/[[SIGMA].sub.i][e.sub.i] = [e.sub.i]/538

conditional only on the winner of the popular vote in the state. I will use [E.sub.i] as the measure of a state's electoral vote influence. (Other measures of influence are considered below, but as a starting point I focus on shares.)

Now consider the distribution of popular vote influence across the states. At first, a state's popular vote influence might seem to be an artificial construct. Each vote counts the same toward the national popular vote regardless of the voter's place of residence. Nonetheless, the state remains the relevant locus because whether a state prefers the electoral college can only be determined by the state and in consideration of an alternative. In particular, I analyze the most commonly suggested and plausible alternative--namely, whether a state would prefer to have the election determined by the electoral college or by the national popular vote. To answer that question it is assumed that a state will prefer the system that maximizes the potential influence of its voters, as represented by the state's popular vote majority, on the outcome of an election.

With regard to a state's popular vote influence, it will help to define some basic measures. Start with two political parties, designated as the D party and the R party.

(2) [V.sup.D.sub.i] : votes for the D party in state i

(3) [v.sup.R.sub.i] : votes for the R party in state i

(4) [m.sub.i] = [absolute value of [v.sup.D.sub.i] - [v.sup.R.sub.i]] : the positive vote difference (the margin) between the parties in state i, which is accorded to the winning party

(5) [t.sub.i] = [v.sup.D.sub.i] + [v.sup.R.sub.i] : the vote total in state i

For each state the popular vote margin in percentage terms is the difference in the vote between the two parties, relative to the total votes cast:

(6) [[alpha].sub.i] = [m.sub.i]/[t.sub.i] : state i's percentage popular vote margin.

With

(7) [[beta].sub.i] = [t.sub.i]/[[SIGMA].sub.i][t.sub.i] : state is share of the national vote, it follows that the difference in the total vote within a state relative to the total vote in the country is given by

(8) [V.sub.i] = [m.sub.i]/[[SIGMA].sub.i][t.sub.i] = [[alpha].sub.i][[beta].sub.i].

Thus, every state's contribution to the national popular vote margin is the popular vote margin in the state multiplied by the relative size of the state. In terms of the popular vote, the state margin and state size are multiplicative...