The Electoral College And Extreme States

by Stuart Shapiro

When I posted a few months ago about eliminating the electoral college, the response from Republicans was outrage.  Let the popular vote decide? Who ever heard of such a thing?  Well maybe I should listen to them.  Jeff Strabone shows that the electoral college primarily hurts small states with extreme margins between the parties, and most of these states are heavily Republican.

…the small states need to reassess their calculations of where their true strength lies. Utah’s five electoral votes will never matter as much in the electoral college as its extreme partisan voting pattern would affect a nationwide popular vote. The same goes for the other states in the charts above.

I still am in favor of a popular vote because I think it is the right thing to do.  It will be interesting to see how Republicans react if President Obama wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote (he is leading by more on the electoral map).

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.