Does anybody know of a web site where I can find the president vote separated by congressional district? Not county.
A few days ago I looked for just such a thing (for my own nefarious purposes) without success. I was wondering who would have won the election if every state apportioned their electors the way Maine does. In Maine (and Nebraska, I think), the candidate who wins the state gets two electors, and the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district gets one elector.
I’ve looked for that data as well, but I don’t think it’s compiled until well after all the ballots are counted, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska where the electoral votes are apportioned that way.
The problem is that in nearly every state, votes are tabulated at the county level, not the congressional district level. To find out how candidates did in a congressional district, you need precinct data if you are checking the larger states. It’s probably not hard to figure out for places like Wyoming and Vermont.
My hunch is that if we gave out electoral votes by congressional district that Bush would still be ahead. He won the overall vote in more states, which would give him at least 20 more of those “bonus” electors. I think Democrats also have a tendency to congregate in large numbers in many districts.
I don’t know how DC would be handled under such a system. Also, a congressional district system would make gerrymandering a necessity for any party’s survival.
That’s what I am working on.
But I want to further see if such a system would have made the current situation worse or better.
(My opinion is that a direct election of the president would be infinitely worse in the current situation as it would require a NATIONAL recount, Gore leads by less than 0.3%). Perhaps the Maine system would allow a more direct method of election while avoiding the regionalization of the presidency that could come from true direct election.
I really hope someone is tracking this information now and I won’t have to wait several months for someone to tabulate it.
I saw one, in a thread here. Not sure which one. From what I could tell, it looked like Bush had prolly 70-80% of the counties in the nation. I would imagine if everyone did it like Maine that Bush would have won easily in the electoral college, but YMMV.
** Nanook** not counties. yes, you’ve seen that number floating around. Congressional districts may be made of several counties (as in the case in rural SD for example), or just PART of counties (in more populated areas).
You can use the future configuration in Congress as a rough guide. There are 220 Republicans and 211 Democrats with 2 independents and 2 races outstanding.
If you figure that Bush and Gore won the districts where the candidates of their party won, you can first say that Bush has 220-211 lead. One of the independents is Bernie Sanders in Vermont, which went for Gore. 220-212. The other independent is in Virigina and usually votes Republican, so 221-212. The 2 outstanding races could very well split between the two parties. A Dem has a slight lead in NJ, and a Rep has a slight lead in FL. So 222-213.
Then you have to assign the “bonus electors”. Let’s not count FL or NM yet, but give Gore OR (most sources do.) That gives Bush 29 states and Gore 19. So that makes it 280-251 Bush.
We have a winner!!!
I didn’t figure in DC’s three votes, but under any system, they’re going to Gore (he got over 80% there). So 280-254 with four votes outstanding.
However, you can’t assume that each candidate won the same congressional district as his party did.
Still, *BobT, it’s a pretty good rule of thumb approach. One presumes it is as likely that a Republican Congressman would win in a district voting for a Democratic Presidential candidate as vice versa.
One interesting advantage to such a system: it reduces even further the likelihood that any one state’s votes, even in one county or district, would make a difference. For that to happen, the undisputed electoral vote would have to be within 3 votes of each other. I leave why this is true as an exercise for the reader. 
Please note that the ‘winner take all’ feature of the system is chosen by the states, not mandated by the constitution. It is, of course, done to protect the main parties from incursions by third parties, who might be able to pick off individual electors, but not whole states.
Whew! I thought somebody was going to tell me my math was off.
Interestingly, before the 1876 election, there were proposals to reform the presidential election process floated: 1) to remove the Electoral College altogether, which was backed by a very small group and 2) the establishment of a district system and the elimination of “winner take all”.
The latter was proposed by a Republican, but it never got out of Congress.
And of course, the 1876 election turned out to be a mess.
For the record, I am a proponent of assigning electors by district in my state.
BUT… the high population areas would probably still be prone to winning a higher number of electors based on their moods. Remember, Congressional districts are supposed to be assigned based on population. So while my state (for example), Michigan, has 16 Congressional districts, I think maybe 9 or 10 of them are centered about the left-leaning Detroit metro area (four or five counties).
Sorry I can’t provide exact figures – my cursory search was unsuccessful. I’ll get back, though.