


Kos has an interesting article about how population growth will change the balance of power among the states in the Electoral College. Seems many of the currently red states will gain power in the E.C., while the blue states will lose power.
Read the Wall Street Journal article he links to, because it answers many obvious questions about it. It doesn't really mean that Democrats are in danger - in fact, it could be a huge advantage to the Democrats, because higher populations usually trend Democratic. If Florida becomes reliably Democratic, then it could be tough for the Republicans in the future. Then again, it might be nothing, because both parties change identities on demand as populations change.
What would be more interesting is to compare the E.C. breakdown in future years with the projected national vote, and see if it becomes even more out of whack. If so, it's yet another reason to expand the number of Representatives in the House of Reps. It would make the E.C. be more representative of the national popular vote.
Update: I don't have time to do it, but here's how it would work. You take a look at the 2000 or 2004 election results. For each state, you find the percentage of total state population that voted for the Republican and Democrat, as well as the number of people who voted, total. You apply that to the 2010, 2020, and 2030 decades to equalize for those reapportionments.
Then for 2000 or 2004, you take the percentage of voters that voted for each candidate, for each state. By applying that to the state's Electoral Votes, you get the percentage of Electoral Votes ("Electoral Power") that each candidate got. By doing this for all states, you can figure out the amount of raw Electoral Power each candidate got. You compare this to the national popular vote to see how out of whack the Electoral College's underlying physics are compared to the popular vote.
Then you do the same for the future decades. When you've finished, you can see how an identical party breakdown compares under different apportionment scenarios. If the split between raw Electoral Power and popular vote is wider in the future, then that's bad news.
Posted by tunesmith at May 25, 2005 05:49 PM
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