We all know the peculiarities of our presidential electoral college system. Nowhere is it more apparent then in the ‘tipping point’ states that determine elections. Because of the winner-take-all appropriation of electoral votes, small changes in those states can have huge ramifications.
Take Pennsylvania for example, since that was the state on everyone’s mind this time around. In 2016, Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania by 0.7% of the vote (48.2 – 47.5; the remaining votes going to 3rd party candidates). This year, Biden won the state by 1.1% (49.9 – 48.8). Not a big change, but it was enough give Biden the 20 electoral votes.
Here’s a way of looking at it. Imagine a room with 99 people in it (pre-COVID, of course). 50 of them are wearing red hats, 49 of them are wearing blue hats. Looking around the room, you couldn’t really tell if there were more red hats or blue hats. I mean, without actually counting. That was Pennsylvania in 2016.
Now, image the same room with the same people, but now it’s 2020. The only change is that one person switched their red hat for a blue hat. Everyone else stayed the same. Question: if you had been in the room in 2016, and then in the 2020 room, would you really have noticed the difference? No, you would have said, “Both rooms look pretty much the same, and pretty even either way.” And you would be right – the state was evenly divided in 2016, and it’s still evenly divided today.
Reflecting this, a sane electoral system would have granted 10 electoral college votes to each candidate in 2016, and in 2020 as well. Well, I would argue that a sane electoral system would just count the national popular vote, but that’s another whole kettle of fish.
