The Electoral College Flips Elections More Than We Thought
A Republican has a 65% chance of winning if the popular vote is close.
“There are more of the red ones, but they don’t have as many people in them.”
Photographer: Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASSAdvocates for reforming the Electoral College will doubtless get a boost by a new and important paper by University of Texas economists Michael Geruso, Dean Spears and Ishaana Talesara. They find that in close presidential elections, the probability of an “inversion” — the popular vote going one way and the electoral vote another — is far higher than most of us suppose.
By now, most people who follow debate on the issue know that in 54 of the nation’s 58 presidential elections — better than 9 times out of 10 — the popular vote and the electoral vote have gone to the same person. Thus we tend to think of an inversion as an anomaly.