Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million and still lost.

If Kamala wins the popular vote, how much does she have to win by to flip

the electoral college to her side?

Does it matter what states she wins in if the margins are low?

  • listless@lemmy.cringecollective.io
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    4 months ago

    Here’s the list of states and electoral college votes:

    https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/allocation

    Just don’t think about the popular vote. It has no bearing on who wins the Presidency in the US.

    You can argue that it should but just accept that under the current rules it does not.

    As far as your question “If Kamala wins the popular vote, how much does she have to win by to flip the electoral college to her side?” the only answer is “it depends”

    It depends because as amazingly stupid as this sounds, one vote for a candidate counts either more or less depending on which state it came from.

    Example of California (most people) and Wyoming (least people)

        California:
            Electoral Votes: 55
            Population: 39,500,000
            Weight:  0.00000139
    
        Wyoming:
            Electoral Votes: 3
            Population: 580,000
            Weight:  0.00000517
    

    A vote in Wyoming (0.00000517) affects the outcome of the electoral college much more than a vote in California (0.00000139).

    Another way of looking at it is that one electoral college vote in California represents the will of a little over 718,000 residents, while in Wyoming it represents the will of a little over 193,000 people.

    Things get even trickier when you factor in the fact that some states split the EC votes based on popular vote or district, and other states are a winner-take-all (whichever candidate takes the state takes all the EC votes.)

    It’s a giant complex mess and it cannot be easily related to the popular vote.