I think the most realistic scenario (which is not very realistic) is something like: An election in which neither of the major party candidates get 270 votes and a third-party candidate narrowly wins the Maine 2nd and gets one electoral vote. The House selects the Maine candidate as President (one of the top three finishers in the electoral college) and he becomes President on the strength of a plurality showing in one district in Maine.
Of course, the real answer to the question is “not all that much”. As far as I know, only one time in US history has a candidate won a majority of the “popular vote” and not won the presidency (and everything about that election is deeply suspect). This issue only comes up when no candidate can command a majority of the voters, which suggests that the margins are pretty small.
I said (and mean): “only one time in US history has a candidate won a majority of the ‘popular vote’ and not won the presidency.” That was in 1876, when Samuel Tilden received 50.9% of the popular vote. But, as I also said, everything about that election is suspect.
You would be very old if it happened in your voting lifetime, and wrong if you think it happened twice.
On several additional occasions (including twice in my lifetime), a candidate has won a plurality (but not a majority) of the popular vote and not won the presidency. Clinton (48.2%), Gore (48.4%), Cleveland (48.6%), Jackson (41.4%). And twice in my lifetime a candidate (the same person!) has won a plurality (but not a majority) and won the presidency.
But my point was this phenomena of “winning” the popular vote and losing in the electoral college has been historically limited to situations in which neither candidate is able to secure a majority of the vote and, as a result, you are not likely to have enormous margins.
This thread is about an objective, answerable, factual question. It is not a debate about what *should *matter. It is a math question. There is unquestionably a metric called “popular vote” and we know what that number is. The fact that is not used to determine the winner of an election is beside the point.
“Exactly” is probably the best term to be using when you attributed something Schnitte wrote to me. And we don’t have “electoral colleges” - there’s only the one.
I think we all understand how the system works. But where we disagree is in your contention that there is no popular vote.
On Election Day, when people go out and vote, they’re voting for their choice for President. Nobody is choosing who they want their Elector to be. Most people couldn’t even tell you which Electors are on the ballot.
And with the Electors being committed to vote for a specific Presidential candidate, it’s meaningless to pretend there’s a distinction between voting for the candidate and voting for the person who will vote for that candidate. The Electoral College isn’t a deliberative body; it’s a rubber stamp.
To my understanding, the cases are only about whether states can fine faithless electors, so I’m not sure the validity of their votes will be addressed too. But maybe the court will use it as an opportunity to finally remove ambiguities and doubts.
There is a movement afoot for states to agree to cast all of their electoral votes according to the national popular vote. This is not a splinter movement but seems to be gaining traction. The idea is that the states will create a de facto election by popular vote without having to change a thing about the electoral college.
There is a movement, but it’s not actually getting very far. The only states that have joined so far are all states that usually vote for Democrats.
It’s also got problems in that the elections are still run by the individual states, not by the federal government, and so there can be differences in eligibility rules between states. And a state that didn’t want to cooperate could just refuse to release their popular vote totals.
Not the Baca case. Baca was a faithless elector and was replaced as an elector with his vote thrown out when he did not vote for Clinton. His case has always been about if an elector could be forced to vote for a specific candidate.
I suppose it is possible that Baca could be decided on very narrow grounds. I have a thread on it somewhere here but basically the law is somewhat ambiguous as to what grounds can an elector be replaced and more importantly it does not state who can replace the elector. SCOTUS could punt on this and say that the Secretary of State is not the one to have removed Baca or that it was not clear what it means to “fail to perform his duty” specifically is it vote or vote for Clinton. Or it could be a landmark decision that once an elector is chosen, they are free to vote for any eligible person without consequence. What makes it interesting is since Sotomayor recused herself from the Baca case they are back to being separate cases in front of SCOTUS. I’m not sure if that would affect the rulings.
I don’t see it happening. States might agree to do this in theory. But would they follow through in the first instance where it would actually determine the outcome of an election?
Let’s say, for example, that it’s 2024. States with a total of 270 EC votes have adopted the NPV principal; they’ve agreed they will cast their electoral college votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote.
Smith and Jones are running for President. Smith wins a majority of popular votes nation wide. But Jones won the majority of votes in California, one of the states which has agreed to follow the NPV rule. California’s electors will be enough to swing the outcome to either candidate.
Would California really stick by its agreement and cast its votes for Smith even though Jones was the winner in California? Would voters in California, who voted for Jones, accept that their state’s votes were instead given to Smith?
As **dtilque **noted, you theoretically only need 11 voters, one from each of the top eleven most populous states - and then have all the eligible voters from all other states vote for the other candidate.
I’m at work now and don’t have time to do the math, but it would probably be something like 150 million votes to just 11. But the eleven-vote candidate would win the presidency.
However…this requires at least 259 Electoral-College electors (who did NOT vote for you, in their own ballots that they cast in the election as normal citizens) to be faithful enough to vote for you as their proscribed duty.
Based on number of registered voters (data from worldpopulationreview.com) the largest margin would be about 83.52 million. This is having Washington D.C. and 39 states all have one vote cast for the winner, and the other 11 states having full turnout for the losing candidate. If it is the opposite (11 states with 1 vote each to get 269 EC votes and full turnout in the 39 states), the margin is only 69.64 million.
The 39 states are those with the fewest registered voters per EC vote, except NJ and VA were switched in the ranking so that the extra EC vote in NJ brings to total to 269 EC votes.
There are about 153 million registered voters. With everyone being faithless electors, that could be the margin.
As others have pointed out, I gave the minimum number of votes to win, but the OP wanted the maximum vote margin. This is a somewhat different question, and gets a different answer. To get that, you switch the two groups of states, but have to swap two states to maintain the electoral vote count of 270-268. So you get 39 states plus DC where you get one vote and everyone votes against you in the other 11.
At any rate, the 230 EC electors who didn’t vote for you didn’t vote for anyone for President, so it’s not like they voted against you.
269 EC votes will make a tie, which is not desired. You need to swap NJ and WA to get the EC vote to 270.
And to maximize the number of votes in the 11 state group, you need to assume that any qualified, but unregistered, potential voters will register in time to vote.
Assuming faithless voters throws the question totally out. It’s a more interesting question if you assume no faithless voters.
The “agreement” isn’t just a handshake. It’s a law passed by each of the relevant states. The question of what happens if the state violates its own law is no more interesting than any question of what happens when a state violates its laws. The legislature of the state could decide to change the laws in effect for the next election, but they couldn’t just retroactively say “we didn’t really mean it”.
What is the problem with a 269-269 tie in EC votes? The House of Representatives would determine the winner in that case, and since each state gets one vote in that tie breaker, the candidate who won 39 states and Washington D.C. would be favored to win the tie breaker.
If the House cannot agree on a winner, the Vice President (picked by the Senate) would be president, with few, or possibly no presidential votes at all (but would have received votes for being Vice President). This scenario seems like a feasible way to get a very large vote disparity.
It is tough to say how absurd you want to get with questions like this. Why not allow the faithless electors scenario if trying to find the most extreme case? What if all but one of the voters from those 39 states moved to California since the previous census (the basis of number of EC votes allocated to the states)?