Working Paper How Noise is Amplified in the Electoral College

Download the latest version of the working paper Factors Driving the Difference between Popular Vote and Electoral Vote in US Presidential Elections: How Noise is Amplified in the Electoral College

Interact with the data! Select any year below to see how many additional electoral votes were awarded due to the effect of census representation in the electoral college each year, when compared to a voter-representation assignment of electoral votes. For more information about the downstream effects of census representation, see the working paper Factors Driving the Difference between Popular Vote and Electoral Vote in US Presidential Elections: How Noise is Amplified in the Electoral College.


The figure above shows the effect of census representation on electoral votes per state for the 2023-2016 elections. The left column shows the number of additional electoral votes allocated to each state due to total resident representation as compared to total voter representation. The second column shows the number of House of Representative electoral votes (HOREV) per 1M voters. States are sorted by decreasing order with states gaining the most electoral votes at the top and states losing the most electoral votes at the bottom. Color indicates the winning party: Red (Republicans), Blue (Democrats). States with negligible change in electoral votes (< 0.5) are not shown.