For all the debates over our intractable political divisions and razor-thin vote marginsaratbet, American presidential elections of late have not been particularly close. Since 2000, the average popular-vote margin is more than 4.6 million. That’s a lot of votes. The appearance that the outcomes are closer is an artifact of the Electoral College, specifically the winner-take-all method of awarding electors, which significantly magnifies the influence of a few arbitrary states.
Swing states, as we call them, are why the presidency has been decided by fewer than 290,000 votes, on average, since 2000. In 2016 and 2020, it was even tighter: A switch of just tens of thousands of votes in a handful of swing states would have reversed the outcomes.
That is why we are forced to care so much about small shifts in votes or in state laws, like the one debated in recent weeks in Nebraska. Since 1992, the deep red state has awarded most of its electors by congressional district, and the Democratic nominee has twice won the Second Congressional District, which includes the state’s largest city, Omaha. State and national Republicans, including Donald Trump, have been pushing hard to switch back to the winner-take-all system, which would deny Vice President Kamala Harris the chance to pick up that elector.
They nearly succeeded until Mike McDonnell, a Republican state senator, announced this week that he would not join his colleagues, killing the switch, at least for now.
“Elections should be an opportunity for all voters to be heard, no matter who they are, where they live or what party they support,” he said in a statement. It’s a critically important principle, and Mr. McDonnell deserves credit for putting it above his party’s wishes.
Yet it would be a mistake to think of what just happened in Nebraska as being in the rearview mirror; rather, as long as we continue to choose our president through the mechanism of the Electoral College, it is a harbinger.
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