Report: There Will Be More Presidents Losing Popular Vote

The United States is the only representative democracy where the presidential candidate who loses the popular vote can still become president. That's what happened with Donald Trump, who received millions of votes less than Hillary Clinton. It's not the only time it has happened. Three other presidents have assumed office even though they received less votes than their opponent. It also happened in 1876, 1888, and 2000.

This happened because of our unfair and archaic electoral college system, which ignores the popular vote in favor of a state-by-state electoral vote system. And it makes a joke of our presidential elections in the eyes of other democracies. How can the winner of the popular vote, the choice of this country's voters, not win an election?

Some might think this was just a fluke. Unfortunately, that's not true. The University of Texas Electoral College Study says this was predictable and should have been expected. It goes on to say it will happen again in the future -- especially in very close elections.

Here's some of what that study says:

There have been four times when the winner of the Presidency did not receive the most votes: 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. What has been unclear until now is how often we should expect these electoral inversions. Was it statistically probable or was it a fluke that the Electoral College would have generated four inversions in the last two centuries?

New research from the University of Texas Electoral College Study (UTECS) provides an answer, using Monte Carlo simulations that generate probability distributions over the likelihood of inversions in elections extending back to 1836.

History tells us that Bush vs Gore 2000 was an inversion. The UTECS analysis tells us that this outcome was more likely than not, given the narrow Democratic margin of victory in the national popular vote. UTECS also tells us that more inversions are very likely in the future.

Data journalists and election forecasters have recently applied increasingly sophisticated statistical tools to analyze politics. They predict results of particular elections, such as Trump vs Clinton in 2016 in the weeks before ballots are cast. But they do not answer one of the deepest questions about the Electoral College:

How likely are inversions as an enduring feature of American political life, independent of two particular candidates or parties?

UTECS analysis makes clear that more inversions are likely in 2020 and beyond. Inversions will be business-as-usual in close elections under the Electoral College system. . . .

The UTECS analysis shows that inversions are surprisingly likely, especially in close elections. The Presidential candidate with the most votes will lose 45% of elections decided by 2 percentage points or less (about 2.6 million votes by 2016 turnout).

This is a long-run property, not a modern phenomenon. Electoral College inversions have been very likely in close elections since the 1800s.

Even as rules and norms governing Presidential elections have changed over the centuries, including empowering an ever larger fraction of the population to have and to use the right to vote, and even as new parties have emerged and new states have joined the US, inversions have endured as a fact of Presidential politics and a likely outcome of close elections.

If elections continue to be as close as they have been in the last 30 years, it is near certainty that Americans who vote for the first time in 2020 will eventually experience an inversion over a 60-year voting lifetime.

Over the last 30 years, the probability that if an inversion occurs, it would have been a Democratic popular vote majority and a Republican Electoral College win has been about 70%.

Although it has not yet happened (except arguably in the case of Kennedy in 1960),  there is a significant possibility that a Democrat will win the Electoral College in a future race in which a Republican wins the popular vote.

No change to the Electoral College other than a national popular vote would eliminate the risk of electoral inversions. Not removing the two Electors corresponding to Senators, which skews representation towards smaller states. Not changing the winner-takes-all method by which most states award EC ballots.

This is because many factors cause inversions. Popular vote totals depend on the number of voters, but Electors are allocated based on the number of persons in the last census—including children and adults who cannot vote.