>Generally, states that are home to more people control more electoral votes. But because electoral votes are allocated according to seats in Congress, where each state holds two Senate seats regardless of population size, electoral representation varies quite a bit.
>Wyoming (the least populous state) makes up about 0.18% of the US population but controls 0.56% of all electoral votes. This difference translates to approximately two additional electoral votes for Wyoming, relative to its population share. If Wyoming’s electoral share aligned with its share of the US population, it would have 0.17% of all 538 votes (about one electoral vote), but because votes are allocated based on seats in Congress, the state has the minimum of three votes in the Electoral College.
>On the other end of the spectrum, California (the most populous state) represents 11.6% of the US population and has 10% of all electoral votes. This means California controls roughly nine fewer votes in the Electoral College than it would if votes were allocated based on population alone (because 11.6% of the total 538 votes is about 63 electoral votes, but California currently controls 54).
>*So, what if electoral vote shares were equal to population shares in every state?*
>It’s important to note that even if electoral votes were allocated exactly according to each state’s share of the US population or share of eligible voters, the electoral process would not resemble a national popular vote. This is because of the winner-take-all rule for choosing state electors, currently used by 48 states and Washington, DC. According to this rule, all electoral votes go toward the candidate that earns the most votes in the state’s general election; therefore, votes cast for any other candidate do not earn any of the state’s electoral votes.
>In other words, according to the winner-take-all policy, a candidate may earn 49.9% of a state’s popular vote and earn 0% of the state’s electoral votes. This explains how a candidate may win the national popular vote but, by failing to earn 270 electoral votes, may still lose the presidential election in the Electoral College.
>The total of 538 electoral votes is fixed, but how these votes are distributed between states can change as a result of the decennial Census. Every 10 years, the results of the Census determine how seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned, and states may gain or lose electoral votes accordingly. The next Census count is in 2030, which will determine the allocation for the 2032 presidential election.
This is as it was meant to be, so that small-population states would not be steam-rolled by the big states.
This makes me hate the electoral college even more.
Seems like we should just get rid of it.
This is really cool. One suggestion to make it more informative is to utilize the y-axis and color to convey additional information. For example, to show population size or voting affinity in the last election.
Uncap the house we don’t have a 1929 population anymore.
6-8million people seems to be a great population for a state. these hover around the “correct” allocation of electoral votes, and there are lot of high quality of life states there like WA MA MD CO… though also IN and MO
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
California is even more underrepresented now, they recently had 3 votes taken away and give to Texas.
So many angry people that think their opinion is more important about a state across the country than those that live there. Stay salty
My hope for the EC getting abolished is that it screws over both parties in various ways. It gives disproportionate power to deep Red Wyoming, but also Deep Blue Vermont. It takes power away from Deep Blue California and New York, but also Red Texas and Red Florida.
It did help narrowly get the last two Republican presidents into the White House, so R’s are against change in a system that favors them. But someday, if the shoe is on the other foot (like if D’s narrowly tip Texas blue), they’ll be on board for reform.
This should be a proportion/percentage based view rather than nominal in my opinion. Pretty neat though.
Is this based on the 2020 population or the population now? Does it factor in the 2022 published [revisions](https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2020-census-count-errors/) by the Census where populations of many states were incorrect, leading to extra seats in some states and fewer in others?
> The following map (in the link) shows how the 2020 Congressional Apportionment would have changed if each State’s total population were accurately reported by the 2020 Census. California, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York would each still have lost a seat, but Minnesota and Rhode Island would each have lost a seat as well. North Carolina, Montana, and Oregon would each still have gained a seat, but Texas and Florida would each have gained three seats instead of two and one, respectively, while Colorado would not have gained any.
It’s almost like someone set up a system that gives the smaller lower population states a little bit more power per person to make sure that the national election doesn’t just focus on the people on the big states and big cities.
Illegals shouldn’t be counted on the census, you can’t change my mind. That obviously affects the electoral votes drastically
The size of the house of reps should really be increased by quite a bit.
I hate being a Democrat in Texas. I remember in middle school when I learned how it worked. Freaked out in class as it gives people in states more proportional voting power than others. It is a “Democracy” with this system.
The larger issue with the electoral college is the winner take all version that states have chosen to implement. They could allocate based on proportion of the state. Now yes small states do get a little bit more representation but that’s not truly where the biggest issue lies
It doesn’t matter. IT DOESN’T MATTER. The problem is not that Wyoming gets 3 votes when they only deserve 1. If you think that’s bad, google the US Senate. The problem is that all 54 of California’s votes will go to a single candidate, no matter how close the race is.
I think an interesting variation would be to measure the power of a voter based on how many it takes to flip a state. for example Florida 2000, 537 voters controlled 25 EVs, but in 2020 California, it takes over 5 million votes to flip 55 EVs
Everyone rips on Wyoming and the two Dakotae for showing the weirdness of representation, but no one mentions Rhode Island and VT/NH, which are equally tiny and interchangeable. Most people don’t know the difference between the last two anyway.
All this is just fine with me. Populous states shouldn’t be able to lord it over less populous states.
States are irrelevant, random, and unrepresentative divisions of the population. In which state you live should have no impact on how much your vote matters.
Abolish this arcane system.
The electoral college needs to go
At least it seems to be skewed in a politically equalish way
I love this! Just curious why absolute magnitudes rather than percentage offsets for the x-axis? TX and CA look really close at 9 and 8.6 respectively, but as percentages they’re actually 22.5% and 15.9%. Or maybe a better example, OH and AZ would be flipped because the additional electoral vote to OH would be about a 6% increase, compared to a 9% increase for AZ. Just a thought. Great work!
Edit: a great depiction of why we should just fully eliminate the electoral college.
I’d like to see the “corrected” electoral count for recent elections. I wonder how different it would be.
Thank God the electoral college isn’t based on population share
I have an idea. How about one electorial college vote per voter?
What a thought.
One issue I have is that seats are allocated based on total population and not population of citizens. California would have something like 8 or 10 fewer seats if non-citizens did not count towards the allocation of seats.
Fun fact, one can win the presidency with only 22% of the popular vote.
I feel like my personal vote is under-allocated by 100% because it gets tossed into a pool where it is immediately rendered irrelevant by the will of an entire state of people who are dumb as bricks.
As foreigner I will say I have not seen one sensible argument about why the EC makes sense for modern America. They just seem to be full of logical and factual fallacies, appeals to tradition, general confusion, and so on.
I do wonder why advocates of it don’t say DC needs more electors (maybe 8). Because if smaller states need a disproportionate advantage, how much more advantage should a District that isn’t even a state be given.
god damn flyover states have way more power than they should
![Under or overallocation of Electoral College votes in 2024 [OC]](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/0ri7bzb4o5yd1-1920x1024.png)
34 comments
Some excerpts from [this project](https://usafacts.org/visualizations/electoral-college-states-representation/):
>Generally, states that are home to more people control more electoral votes. But because electoral votes are allocated according to seats in Congress, where each state holds two Senate seats regardless of population size, electoral representation varies quite a bit.
>Wyoming (the least populous state) makes up about 0.18% of the US population but controls 0.56% of all electoral votes. This difference translates to approximately two additional electoral votes for Wyoming, relative to its population share. If Wyoming’s electoral share aligned with its share of the US population, it would have 0.17% of all 538 votes (about one electoral vote), but because votes are allocated based on seats in Congress, the state has the minimum of three votes in the Electoral College.
>On the other end of the spectrum, California (the most populous state) represents 11.6% of the US population and has 10% of all electoral votes. This means California controls roughly nine fewer votes in the Electoral College than it would if votes were allocated based on population alone (because 11.6% of the total 538 votes is about 63 electoral votes, but California currently controls 54).
>*So, what if electoral vote shares were equal to population shares in every state?*
>It’s important to note that even if electoral votes were allocated exactly according to each state’s share of the US population or share of eligible voters, the electoral process would not resemble a national popular vote. This is because of the winner-take-all rule for choosing state electors, currently used by 48 states and Washington, DC. According to this rule, all electoral votes go toward the candidate that earns the most votes in the state’s general election; therefore, votes cast for any other candidate do not earn any of the state’s electoral votes.
>In other words, according to the winner-take-all policy, a candidate may earn 49.9% of a state’s popular vote and earn 0% of the state’s electoral votes. This explains how a candidate may win the national popular vote but, by failing to earn 270 electoral votes, may still lose the presidential election in the Electoral College.
>The total of 538 electoral votes is fixed, but how these votes are distributed between states can change as a result of the decennial Census. Every 10 years, the results of the Census determine how seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned, and states may gain or lose electoral votes accordingly. The next Census count is in 2030, which will determine the allocation for the 2032 presidential election.
This is as it was meant to be, so that small-population states would not be steam-rolled by the big states.
This makes me hate the electoral college even more.
Seems like we should just get rid of it.
This is really cool. One suggestion to make it more informative is to utilize the y-axis and color to convey additional information. For example, to show population size or voting affinity in the last election.
Uncap the house we don’t have a 1929 population anymore.
6-8million people seems to be a great population for a state. these hover around the “correct” allocation of electoral votes, and there are lot of high quality of life states there like WA MA MD CO… though also IN and MO
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
California is even more underrepresented now, they recently had 3 votes taken away and give to Texas.
So many angry people that think their opinion is more important about a state across the country than those that live there. Stay salty
My hope for the EC getting abolished is that it screws over both parties in various ways. It gives disproportionate power to deep Red Wyoming, but also Deep Blue Vermont. It takes power away from Deep Blue California and New York, but also Red Texas and Red Florida.
It did help narrowly get the last two Republican presidents into the White House, so R’s are against change in a system that favors them. But someday, if the shoe is on the other foot (like if D’s narrowly tip Texas blue), they’ll be on board for reform.
This should be a proportion/percentage based view rather than nominal in my opinion. Pretty neat though.
Is this based on the 2020 population or the population now? Does it factor in the 2022 published [revisions](https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2020-census-count-errors/) by the Census where populations of many states were incorrect, leading to extra seats in some states and fewer in others?
> The following map (in the link) shows how the 2020 Congressional Apportionment would have changed if each State’s total population were accurately reported by the 2020 Census. California, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York would each still have lost a seat, but Minnesota and Rhode Island would each have lost a seat as well. North Carolina, Montana, and Oregon would each still have gained a seat, but Texas and Florida would each have gained three seats instead of two and one, respectively, while Colorado would not have gained any.
It’s almost like someone set up a system that gives the smaller lower population states a little bit more power per person to make sure that the national election doesn’t just focus on the people on the big states and big cities.
Illegals shouldn’t be counted on the census, you can’t change my mind. That obviously affects the electoral votes drastically
The size of the house of reps should really be increased by quite a bit.
I hate being a Democrat in Texas. I remember in middle school when I learned how it worked. Freaked out in class as it gives people in states more proportional voting power than others. It is a “Democracy” with this system.
The larger issue with the electoral college is the winner take all version that states have chosen to implement. They could allocate based on proportion of the state. Now yes small states do get a little bit more representation but that’s not truly where the biggest issue lies
It doesn’t matter. IT DOESN’T MATTER. The problem is not that Wyoming gets 3 votes when they only deserve 1. If you think that’s bad, google the US Senate. The problem is that all 54 of California’s votes will go to a single candidate, no matter how close the race is.
I think an interesting variation would be to measure the power of a voter based on how many it takes to flip a state. for example Florida 2000, 537 voters controlled 25 EVs, but in 2020 California, it takes over 5 million votes to flip 55 EVs
Everyone rips on Wyoming and the two Dakotae for showing the weirdness of representation, but no one mentions Rhode Island and VT/NH, which are equally tiny and interchangeable. Most people don’t know the difference between the last two anyway.
All this is just fine with me. Populous states shouldn’t be able to lord it over less populous states.
States are irrelevant, random, and unrepresentative divisions of the population. In which state you live should have no impact on how much your vote matters.
Abolish this arcane system.
The electoral college needs to go
At least it seems to be skewed in a politically equalish way
I love this! Just curious why absolute magnitudes rather than percentage offsets for the x-axis? TX and CA look really close at 9 and 8.6 respectively, but as percentages they’re actually 22.5% and 15.9%. Or maybe a better example, OH and AZ would be flipped because the additional electoral vote to OH would be about a 6% increase, compared to a 9% increase for AZ. Just a thought. Great work!
Edit: a great depiction of why we should just fully eliminate the electoral college.
I’d like to see the “corrected” electoral count for recent elections. I wonder how different it would be.
Thank God the electoral college isn’t based on population share
I have an idea. How about one electorial college vote per voter?
What a thought.
One issue I have is that seats are allocated based on total population and not population of citizens. California would have something like 8 or 10 fewer seats if non-citizens did not count towards the allocation of seats.
Fun fact, one can win the presidency with only 22% of the popular vote.
I feel like my personal vote is under-allocated by 100% because it gets tossed into a pool where it is immediately rendered irrelevant by the will of an entire state of people who are dumb as bricks.
As foreigner I will say I have not seen one sensible argument about why the EC makes sense for modern America. They just seem to be full of logical and factual fallacies, appeals to tradition, general confusion, and so on.
I do wonder why advocates of it don’t say DC needs more electors (maybe 8). Because if smaller states need a disproportionate advantage, how much more advantage should a District that isn’t even a state be given.
god damn flyover states have way more power than they should
Comments are closed.