Will the Electoral College favor Biden or Trump? Here’s what researchers predict
Researchers from Columbia University explored thousands of simulations to figure out who the Electoral College will favor this presidential election based on who it voted for in past elections.
The trio’s calculations revealed a “slight bias” toward President Donald Trump, but one that is about “half as severe” as that of 2016, according to the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
There’s also the possibility that if Trump were to win the popular vote by a “slim margin,” he could lose the Electoral College, with the predicted bias favoring former Vice President Joe Biden instead.
“We note that 2016 was a statistical outlier,” study co-author Robert Erikson, a political science professor at Columbia University, who pointed out that Trump won in 2016 by barely winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, said in a news release. “The Democratic versus Republican divisions in the prior election have mattered, but only up to a point. That is why the same national popular vote as 2016 could have a different Electoral College outcome.”
What is the Electoral College?
Trump’s 2016 victory with the Electoral College, despite losing the popular vote, inspired the researchers to explore all the possibilities of 2020’s presidential outcome and biases.
U.S. presidents are not elected directly by the citizens, known as the popular vote. They are chosen by “electors” through a process called the Electoral College. This process was established in the Constitution as a compromise to give both citizens and Congress members a chance to choose who they think is fit for presidency.
There are 538 electors based on 435 representatives and 100 senators from the 50 states, plus three electors from Washington, D.C. States with the most electors are California (55), Texas (38), New York (29), Florida (29), Illinois (20) and Pennsylvania (20). These numbers are based on each state’s population size.
A presidential candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes, or more than half of all electors, to win the election. But some deem the Electoral College biased because not all state laws require electors to follow their state’s popular vote.
Who will Electoral College favor in 2020 election?
The researchers examined historical Electoral College bias in past elections, as well as voting patterns in each state going back to 1980 using mathematical equations.
Over the nine presidential elections leading up to 2016, the Electoral College showed little bias toward one party over the other, according to the study. There was some bias working in the Democrats’ favor in the three presidential elections leading up to 2016, however, the researchers found.
“Although it has not granted either party a persistent historical advantage, the Electoral College has offered a mild, seemingly random, perturbation to the outcome, which matters in close elections,” the trio wrote in their study. “The Electoral College’s tilt toward Trump in 2016 stands out for its absolute magnitude, with the largest gap out of all elections.”
If Biden gets 51% of the popular vote, the team estimates that he would have a 46% chance of winning the Electoral College and a 50% chance of winning the “electoral votes-rich states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and losing the less rich states of Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Nevada.”
“We found that Biden probably does not need as big a popular vote margin as Hillary Clinton did,” study co-author Karl Sigman, professor of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia, said in the news release.
“If the vote were 51-49, as it was with Hillary Clinton, that would be the tipping point, and the Electoral College could go either way rather than a certain Trump victory.”
But if the popular vote ended in a tie, the team’s simulations say Trump would have a 12% chance of losing, or 88% chance of winning. And if the popular vote was 52 to 48 in favor of Biden, the former vice president would have a similar probability of losing, according to the study.
