OxBlog

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

# Posted 4:45 AM by Patrick Belton  

ELECTORAL COLLEGE TRACKING MAP: Arthur Tripias has an electoral college map of the United States indicating which candidate is currently ahead in each state, according to the latest polls. He will be updating the map frequently between now and the election. If the election were held today? Bush by 307 electoral votes to 231.

So how does that stack up against last time? In 2000, Bush received 271 votes to Gore's 266 - which made that the closest collegiate result since 1876. By way of comparison, in 1976, Carter secured 297 votes against Ford's 240 (a Washington State 'faithless' elector voted for Reagan in the end); Kennedy bested Nixon in 1960 by a fairly expansive college margin of 303 against 219 (Harry Byrd received 15 votes). In historical elections, the closest results were Jefferson-Burr's 73-73 tie in 1800 prior to the ratification of the 12th Amendment (which sent the election of the President to the House, where 10 state delegations then voted for Jefferson, 4 for Burr, and 2 abstained), and 1876's Hayes-Tilden 185-184 score, where Congress referred a dispute over the votes of four states to the Electoral Commission, which then awarded their votes to Hayes. Even George Washington's practically-speaking uncontested election of 1789 wasn't particularly close as an electoral college result, with his vice president John Adams securing 34 votes against his 69 in a preordained result. In particularly bad electoral college showings, Roosevelt-Landon in 1936 produced a 523-8 landslide (whereas even in wartime, Dewey would hold FDR to at least 432-99 in 1944); Nixon received 520 against McGovern's 17 in 1972; and Reagan bested Mondale by 525-13 in 1984. Lincoln's 212-21 trouncing of McClellan in 1864 no doubt deserves mention, too.

Incidentally, Benjamin Harrison's victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 wasn't that close in the electoral vollege, even though popularity queen Cleveland turned a capital-L loser when she got to college (Ed: wait, I think you're looking for www.nytimes.com/dowd - this is OxBlog. MD: oh, thanks!), and Cleveland bested Harrison by a mere 100,456 votes in the national popular count (5,540,309 votes to Harrison's 5,439,853). The electoral college produced a healthy spread that year of 233-168. (And if you're curious, as a percentage of votes cast, Cleveland's lead of 0.915% compares quite healthily with 2000's margin of 0.536% for Gore)

And finally, if you're going to be an elector and want to maximise your influence, then head to one of these states, which haven't passed laws against faithless electors: among them, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Texas, and Illinois. (It's questionable whether penalties in other states are legally enforceable, too, and no state has ever sought to apply such a penalty.) Here's a list of faithless electors in history - the first was Pennsylvania's Samuel Miles in 1796 (pledged to John Adams, cast vote for Thomas Jefferson); New Hampshire's William Plummer in 1820 changed his ballot to ensure (mistakenly, but laudably) that no President other than George Washington would be elected with the unanimous vote of the Electoral College; in 2000, the District of Columbia's Barbara Lett-Simmons abstained from voting for Gore to protest the district's lack of congressional representation. The coveted title of stupidest faithless elector probably goes to nurse Margaret Leach of West Virginia, who in 1988 was shocked to learn that she could vote for whichever candidate she chose, so she switched the names of Dukakis and Bentsen; when she tried to convince other electors to follow suit, no one joined her.
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