Want to know more about where the presidential candidates stand? Want to know more about the 500-plus candidates for local offices across Southwest and Southside this year? See our Voter Guide.
I believe the polls, yet I don’t believe the polls.
In that way, I’m like the theoretical Schrodinger’s cat, which exists in two states of being at once — both alive and dead.
Here’s what I mean: Democrats are thrilled by polls that show Kamala Harris with a lead over Donald Trump nationwide (although there was a new one this week from Fox News that showed Trump ahead, so Democrats aren’t so thrilled with that). Either way, those polls mean nothing. Just ask Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. We don’t elect presidents based on the popular vote, we elect them through the Electoral College, so what really matters are the polls in a half-dozen swing states, or fewer.
Most Americans won’t have any real say-so in who the next president is, but the people who live in Pennsylvania sure will. This is a consequence of both the Constitution and also our increasing political polarization.
In 1976, when Jimmy Carter narrowly won over Gerald Ford, there were only three states where the winner took 60% or more of the vote: Arkansas and Georgia for Carter, Utah for Ford. By 2020, that number had swelled to 15.
In 1976, there were 22 states where the final margin was 5 percentage points or less. By 2020, there were just seven states that close.
In 1976, most of the country was “in play” to some degree. Today? Some days it seems we’re not electing a president of the United States, we’re electing a president of Pennsylvania.
The Electoral College is not going away — the hurdles to changing the Constitution are too high — but we ought to recognize how the changing nature of our political landscape has narrowed the playing field dramatically. Is it healthy to have a half-dozen or so states choose the president? Or does the answer to that depend on who they choose?
It’s easy to speculate on what would happen if the Electoral College went away: We’d see candidates campaign in fundamentally different ways. Republicans would spend time in California — Donald Trump received more votes in California than he did anywhere else last time; they just didn’t do him any good because Joe Biden got even more there. Democrats would spend more time in the South — they can’t win those states, but they could try to maximize turnout among Black voters in Alabama and Mississippi whose votes now make no real difference in a national race.
Instead, just for the pure thrill of doing the math, let’s look at what would happen if Virginia used an Electoral College to elect our governors. There is, as Polonius said of Hamlet, method to my madness.
I’m going to use the 2020 census as our starting point. I’m going to treat each county and city as equivalent to a state. I’m not going to work up some magic formula to assign the number of those votes. Nor am I going to worry about the extra two electoral votes that each state gets for its two senators, which has the effect of giving an electoral advantage to small states. I realize that’s one of the main criticisms of the Electoral College, especially from Democrats, since those small states generally favor Republicans. I think I can make the point without getting into that.
To simplify things, I’ll just use the 2020 population as the electoral vote — so, yes, even tiny Highland County gets 2,232 electoral votes, which seems a lot until we realize that Fairfax County gets 1,150,309. Otherwise, this exercise will work just like the Electoral College: Whoever gets the most votes in a county or city gets all the electoral votes for that locality, and the goal is to get a majority — 4,315,697.
Let’s go.
Let’s start with Northern Virginia because all these places are now solidly Democratic:
Fairfax County: 1,150,309
Prince William County: 482,204
Loudoun County: 420,959
Arlington County: 238,634
Alexandria: 159,467
Manassas: 42,722
Fairfax (city): 24,146
Manassas Park: 17,219
Falls Church: 14,658
Total: 2,550,318
Whoa.
Under this experiment, Democrats would already be halfway to victory and have barely crossed the Occoquan River.
Now let’s add in some places downstate that always go Democratic.
Henrico County: 334,389
Norfolk: 238,005
Richmond: 226,610
Newport News: 186,247
Hampton: 137,148
Albemarle County: 112,395
Roanoke: 100,011
Portsmouth: 97,915
Harrisonburg: 51,814
Charlottesville: 46,553
Petersburg: 33,458
Fredericksburg: 27,982
Williamsburg: 15,425
Lexington: 7,320
Emporia: 5,766
That brings us to 4,171,356, leaving Democrats just 144,341 shy of our fictional majority. All they’d have to do would be to carry Chesterfield County, something they’ve done more often than not lately, and they’d win.
In 2021, Glenn Youngkin carried Chesterfield. However, Terry McAuliffe carried enough other localities — Suffolk being the most populous at 94,324 — that had this imaginary electoral scheme been in place, he’d have won the governorship, even though Youngkin clearly won the popular vote. Narrowly, but clearly.
McAuliffe would have finished with 4,391,276 electoral votes — 75,579 more than he needed. Suffolk, which he carried with 52.0% of the vote, would have made the difference, at least in theory. If this were really how we did things, then Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle would apply: By observing something, we change its behavior. More to the point, campaigns would behave differently, so voters might behave differently, as well. Earlier this week I looked at the different ways that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump would try to increase manufacturing jobs. I pointed out that manufacturing plays an outsized role in the campaign because so many swing states are industrial states. If the swing states were farm states, we’d hear more about agricultural policy. Same here. If this is how we elected governors, the candidates would be much more attuned to the needs of Chesterfield County and Suffolk (and Southwest and much of Southside would get the same attention that North Dakota does today at the national level, which is to say, none).
Obviously, this isn’t how we elect governors, and I’m certainly not advocating for this system. However, this does serve as an example of how the Electoral College works nationally. Some people’s votes count more than others, and this year those of Pennsylvanians count a lot more than ours here in Virginia, no matter which side we’re on.
Wait, is that George Allen?
No, you don’t need your eyes checked. No, you’ve not gotten into a time machine. Yes, that’s former Gov. (and former Sen.) George Allen, who was speaking to Roanoke Valley law enforcement personnel Thursday, with Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares behind him. Allen accompanied Miyares on a tour of Southwest Virginia. I’ll have more to say about that and other things in this week’s West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter, which goes out Friday afternoon. Also in this week’s newsletter:
- Some historical context on the recent purge of Virignia’s voter rolls.
- A curious finding in this week’s campaign finance reports that may shed some light on 2025.
- Meet the candidates that Cardinal readers are searching for most in our Voter Guide.
You can sign up for any of our free newsletters below:
