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The Empirical Implications of Electoral College Reform
Darshan J. Goux and David A. Hopkins
American Politics Research 2008 36: 857
DOI: 10.1177/1532673X08324213
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The Empirical Implications
of Electoral College Reform
American Politics Research
Volume 36 Number 6
November 2008 857-879
© 2008 Sage Publications
10.1177/1532673X08324213
http://apr.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
Darshan J. Goux
David A. Hopkins
University of California, Berkeley
The events of 2000 inspired renewed debate in America over the manner in
which presidents are chosen, with many critics of the existing system favoring the alternative of direct popular election. These advocates of reform often
argue that the strategic environment shaped by the electoral college distorts
the democratic process by encouraging candidates to focus on a few politically competitive states while virtually ignoring the majority of the nation.
Using empirical evidence, we evaluate the claim that the electoral college is
antidemocratic due to its effect on campaign strategy. Furthermore, we consider the possible alternative strategies adopted by candidates under a hypothetical national popular presidential election. We conclude that many of the
consequences of electoral college reform, unacknowledged by its proponents, would not necessarily make presidential elections substantially more
democratic, and we call for additional empirical research on a topic that has
heretofore been dominated by theoretical debate and speculation.
Keywords: electoral college; political campaigns; elections; presidency;
political parties; mobilization; battleground states
A
ugust 4, 2004, was just another day on the campaign trail for President
George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Senator John F. Kerry
of Massachusetts. Bush delivered a stump speech in a riverfront park
emphasizing his administration’s economic policies and record on fighting
terrorism, whereas Kerry, hosting a public forum in a convention center,
criticized the president for a loss of manufacturing jobs and pledged to
reduce the American military presence in Iraq. The two candidates’ campaign events that day appeared remarkable only for their proximity—held
within a half mile of each other in the medium-sized midwestern city of
Davenport, Iowa (Balz & Goldstein, 2004). In a nation of nearly 300
Authors’ Note: Please address correspondence to David A. Hopkins, Institute of Governmental
Studies, 109 Moses Hall #2370, Berkeley, CA 94720-2370; e-mail: [email protected].
857
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million people spread over 3.5 million square miles, Bush and Kerry found
themselves competing for votes in the same neighborhood.
Although campaign aides insisted that the candidates did not intend their
visits to occur simultaneously, it was hardly a pure coincidence that both
men chose to spend the day in Davenport. Capturing the White House
requires winning a majority of electoral votes, which the states allocate in
a winner-take-all fashion to the candidate finishing first in the statewide
popular vote.1 The American system of presidential selection, therefore,
encourages candidates to concentrate their campaign resources in the
minority of states considered winnable by either party (such as Iowa in
2004). Residents of these swing or battleground states receive a great deal
of attention—candidate appearances, television advertisements, and mobilization efforts—from both sides during the months before the election,
whereas the rest of the nation, deemed noncompetitive, experiences relatively little direct campaign activity.
This characteristic of the electoral college has gained increasing notice
from journalists and scholars alike in recent elections.2 To critics, already
dissatisfied with the electoral college’s ability to deny the presidency to a
candidate who finishes first in the overall national popular vote, the battleground state phenomenon further reinforces the institution’s antidemocratic nature. They argue that the electoral college, when combined with the
winner-take-all allocation of state electors, gives disproportionate weight to
the votes cast within politically competitive states. Because candidates
focus their campaign resources on courting the residents of battleground
states, those lucky voters reap benefits unavailable to the less fortunate citizens of states deemed safe and therefore ignored. That Davenport, Iowa,
should be judged sufficiently important to the outcome of the election to
warrant public appearances by both major presidential candidates on the
same day, whereas the entire states of New York, Texas, and California
receive no significant candidate attention during the entire general election
campaign, strikes these observers as fundamentally unfair.
This newly popular critique of the electoral college deserves serious
consideration. Many previous criticisms of the institution’s antidemocratic
attributes focused on scenarios that, although highly consequential, have
occurred rarely (the election of the popular-vote loser, the election of the
president by the House of Representatives) or never (the wholesale defection of electors to a rival candidate) in American history. In contrast, the
massive effect of the electoral college on campaign strategy and candidate
behavior is not only readily apparent and undoubtedly significant but
dependably arises in every election. Even incumbent presidents tend to
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govern with the electoral college in mind during their first term in office
(Doherty, 2006). If the battleground state phenomenon truly represents a
significant distortion of the electoral process, it bolsters the case for fundamental reform of the American system of presidential selection.
We seek to evaluate several of the key claims advanced by critics of the
electoral college who cite its (in their view) detrimental effects on campaign strategy as justification for reform or abolition of the institution. For
this reason, we intend not only to determine whether the cited shortcomings
of the existing electoral college are substantiated by available evidence but
also whether they would be ameliorated by the introduction of direct popular election. This second goal admittedly requires some informed speculation, but we believe reasonable assumptions can be made about the nature
of candidate behavior under this alternative electoral system.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, our findings are somewhat mixed. On a few specific points, empirical evidence suggests that the battleground state phenomenon does work to the benefit of some classes of voters at the presumed
expense of others. More broadly, however, we conclude that the strategic
targeting of voters in specific geographic areas by presidential campaigns
would continue even if the electoral college were abolished. Observers who
interpret the degree of campaign attention received by a voter as an indicator of that voter’s electoral importance are likely to remain unsatisfied with
the process of presidential selection even under a system of direct popular
election.
Strategy-Based Critiques of the Electoral College
The electoral college has long exerted a powerful influence on the calculations of political actors. Yet much of the previous academic debate has
not focused on candidate strategy. Prominent works have centered on
the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the electoral college at the
Constitutional Convention (Dahl, 2003), on theoretical concerns such as the
proper role of “the federal principle” in choosing presidents (Best, 2004),
on states’ relative voting power in a presidential election (Longley & Dana,
1992), and on a long-running but (to date) inconclusive series of analyses
attempting to measure the direction and degree of partisan bias in the electoral college (e.g., Berthoud, 1997; Destler, 1996; Garand & Parent, 1991;
Grofman, Brunell, & Campagna, 1997).
Objections to the electoral college on the grounds that it discriminates
against voters who do not reside in battleground states seem to have
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become more frequent in recent years, perhaps due to the popular view of
contemporary America as divided into staunchly red and blue bastions.
Such polarization, to the extent that it has actually occurred, relegates most
of the nation to the sidelines in presidential elections, leaving little competitive territory for the parties to fight over. Rakove (2004, p. 23) argued,
“The logic of the electoral system and the sophistication of modern polling
methods enable campaigns to concentrate resources and attention on the
relatively small number of . . . ‘battleground states.’ Far from diffusing
political activity across the extended republic, electoral logic allows it to be
narrowly targeted to key communities and particular interests within them.”
For these reasons, some advocates of reform argue that the electoral college consistently deprives most Americans of a meaningful voice in the
selection of their president. As Peirce (2004, p. xi) put it, “Is it too much to
ask: Couldn’t we all have a vote that counts?”3 According to this view, votes
count only if they are cast within states contested by both major parties.
Bennett (2006, p. 163) explained, “It is obvious that a voter in a state that is
closely divided among presidential candidates effectively casts a weightier
vote than does one in a similarly populous but politically lopsided state.”
It is certainly obvious that residents of battleground states are the primary targets of candidate persuasion efforts. Whether this attention results
in an effectively weightier vote is somewhat less clear, requiring some elaboration (and empirical confirmation) of the benefits exclusively enjoyed by
these voters. We turn to this question next. Moreover, we caution against
the assumption that abolition of the electoral college would give all
Americans a vote that counts under this definition. There is good reason to
believe that campaigns will continue to target particular geographic concentrations of voters and not others even under a nominally national popular election; we return to this argument below.
What’s Distinctive About Battleground State Voters?
Claims that the battleground state phenomenon renders presidential elections undemocratic or unfair rest on the assumption that residents of battleground states differ from their counterparts elsewhere in some politically
relevant way. If the battleground state population were a fully representative
sample of the national population, and if battleground state voters did not
derive some benefit—instrumental, psychic, or otherwise—from their status
as campaign targets, then the electoral college’s effect of restricting campaign
activity to a subset of states would not seem to constitute a significant flaw. We
seek to determine whether and to what extent the residents of battleground
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Table 1
Targeted States in 2004
State
Candidate Visits
States in Which Both Campaigns Purchased Advertising
Ohio
Iowa
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
Florida
Minnesota
Michigan
New Mexico
West Virginia
Colorado
New Hampshire
Nevada
Oregon
Maine
Washington
Other States With at Least One Candidate Visit
Missouri
North Carolina
New Jersey
Arizona
Arkansas
Hawaii
Maryland
South Carolina
Texas
Wyoming
45
31
30
28
23
19
17
12
11
10
10
7
5
4
0
7
5
4
3
1
1
1
1
1
1
Note: Candidate visits refers to visits by any of the four presidential and vice presidential nominees during the period September 3 to November 1, 2004, in which the candidate made at
least one public appearance (state visits for the sole purpose of appearing on television
programs or attending fundraising events are excluded).
Source: Candidate visit data from Democracy in Action, George Washington University,
http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/chrnfall.html (last accessed July 25, 2008). Advertising
data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project, University of Wisconsin, http://www.polisci
.wisc.edu/tvadvertising/ (last accessed July 25, 2008), and Daron R. Shaw (2006).
states are politically distinctive, using the 2004 presidential election as a basis
for our empirical inquiry.
Table 1 presents measures of state-by-state activity by the Bush and Kerry
campaigns during the 2 months in 2004 between the end of the Republican
National Convention (the later of the two party conventions) and Election Day,
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demonstrating that contemporary campaigns indeed focus their activities on a
limited number of politically competitive states while paying less attention to
the rest of the nation. Of the 277 total state visits during this period, more than
90% were concentrated in just 12 states, with the top 5 (Ohio, Iowa,
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida) accounting for well over half of all visits. Television spots followed a similar pattern; advertisements sponsored by
both campaigns or national parties aired in only 15 states between the end of
the conventions and the election.
The statewide election results mirror the campaign strategists’ targets.
Each of the 12 most competitive states, in which the margin of victory was
5 percentage points or less, had been campaign battlegrounds during the
previous 2 months, bombarded with paid media messages and hosting at
least five candidate visits.4 Of the 15 states in which both campaigns sponsored television advertising, only in Maine and West Virginia did one candidate receive at least 55% of the two-party vote.
Is this subset of contested states unrepresentative of the nation as a
whole, thus systematically benefiting particular social groups at the
expense of others? Table 2 compares the demographic profile of the battleground states in 2004 to that of all other states and to the total national population. On most characteristics, residents of battleground states differ quite
mildly from their counterparts in noncompetitive states. They are slightly
more likely to have a high school diploma and a household income of less
than US$35,000, but fewer have a college or graduate degree or make at
least US$100,000. Battleground residents are slightly older than the general
population and are marginally more likely to be military veterans or union
members. Other than an overrepresentation of White Protestants in the battleground states, the distribution of religious affiliations also differs little
between the two categories.
The biggest differences between the battleground state population and the
rest of the nation occur in the domain of race. Battleground states contain a
lower proportion of racial minorities—Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native
Americans. The relative Whiteness of electoral battlegrounds in 2004 is due to
the lack of partisan competition across much of the Deep South, where African
Americans constitute a significant portion of the population and in states with
large Latino communities such as California, Texas, and New York.
In contemporary politics, at least, the electoral college may work to
underrepresent racial minorities within the electorate targeted by presidential candidates. This is a potentially damning indictment of the institution,
especially considering the extensive history of electoral discrimination in
the United States. Is the voting strength of minority groups unacceptably
diluted by the electoral college?
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Table 2
How Representative Are the Battleground States?
2004
Social Attribute
Income less than US$35K
Income between US$35K
and US$100K
Income more than US$100K
High school diploma
College degree (BA)
Graduate degree
65 years or older
Military veteran
Union member
Black
Latino
Asian
Native American
Mainline Protestant (White)
Evangelical Protestant (White)
Black Protestant
Roman Catholic
Mormon
Jewish
Muslim
Unaffiliated
Battleground
States (%)
Other
States (%)
Total
United States (%)
41.8
41.3
41.5
47.5
10.7
73.1
20.4
7.2
18.5
14.0
8.1
7.9
7.1
2.0
0.7
21.1
24.5
6.9
24.1
0.9
1.8
0.4
15.8
45.7
13.0
68.7
21.6
8.0
16.0
12.0
7.1
12.9
12.7
4.5
0.8
16.0
23.0
10.8
24.6
1.4
2.3
0.6
13.6
45.7
12.3
70.1
21.3
7.7
16.7
12.6
7.4
11.4
11.0
3.7
0.8
17.5
23.4
9.6
24.5
1.3
2.2
0.5
14.3
Note: All figures represent the proportion of the adult (18 and older) population, except
income figures, which represent the proportion of households. We consider the battleground
states to be the 15 states exposed to campaign advertising on television in the fall of 2004 (see
Table 1).
Source: Data from 2000 U.S. Census, U.S. Bureau of the Census, http://www.census.gov (last
accessed July 25, 2008), except union membership data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.t05.htm (last accessed July 25, 2008), and religious
affiliation data compiled by John C. Green, University of Akron, available at http://www.beliefnet
.com/politics/religiousaffiliation.html (last accessed July 25, 2008).
Some critics believe so. One argues that “few Republican presidential
candidates under the electoral college have been willing to compete aggressively for African Americans’ votes” (Edwards, 2004, p. 98), presumably
because Black voters are underrepresented in battleground states. But it is
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unclear whether a nationwide popular vote would lead to a significantly different outcome. Research relating to congressional redistricting has demonstrated that the voting records of Republican officeholders do not become
more sensitive to the political agenda of most African Americans even in
southern states where the Black population exceeds 30% (Cameron,
Epstein, & O’Halloran, 1996; Lublin, 1997). If African Americans do not
receive sufficient attention from both parties during electoral campaigns, it
is likely because they are not considered swing voters, whether or not they
reside in swing states. Latinos are even more disadvantaged by the campaigns’ focus on battleground states, as Table 2 indicates, yet the perception
that they are comparatively open to persuasion led to a remarkably prominent initiative by the Republican Party to court their support in the last two
presidential contests.
To be sure, the underrepresentation of racial minorities in the states contested by both campaigns in 2004 presents a potentially serious challenge
to defenders of the electoral college. The extent to which it results in electoral inequality in practice depends, we believe, on the value of any benefits that accrue exclusively to the inhabitants of battleground states. We
explore that question further in the next section.
The Elusive Benefits of Battleground State Residence
Critics of the electoral college often assert or imply that residence in a
contested state bestows a number of desirable electoral rewards on citizens.
For example, Bennett (2006, p. 163) argued that “candidates for president
lavish time—and promises—on politically competitive states to the virtual
exclusion of those where the outcome is foreordained,” suggesting that the
residents of electoral battlegrounds enjoy concrete benefits denied to their
less fortunate counterparts elsewhere. Although candidates certainly spend
the bulk of their time (and advertising dollars) in these states, few examples
of such promises made by candidates to particular states are immediately
apparent. Perhaps the support of candidates of both parties for the embargo
against Cuba qualifies as a state-specific promise designed to win favor
with the refugee population in South Florida, as does the perennial declared
opposition to the storage of nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. In
general, though, presidential elections in the United States hardly seem
dominated by such parochial matters. Even Edwards (2004, pp. 101-102)
found little mention of state interests in the campaign rhetoric of presidential candidates. Evidence that electoral targeting influences policy decisions
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Table 3
Turnout Rates in Battleground States, 2000 and 2004
Battleground states
All other states
United States total
Turnout Rate 2000 (%)
Turnout Rate 2004 (%)
57.3
52.0
54.2
66.7
56.8
59.8
Note: Figures represent percentage of voting-eligible population casting ballots for president.
Battleground states in 2000 were Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Source: Turnout data compiled by Michael P. McDonald, George Mason University, available
at http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm (last accessed July 25, 2008). Battleground state
data from Shaw (2006).
by incumbent presidents is likewise limited (see McCarty, 2000; Mebane &
Wawro, 2002 for exceptions).
One clear consequence of the battleground state phenomenon is the targeted mobilization efforts in contested states funded by candidates, parties,
and interest groups on both sides. Political scientists have long demonstrated a link between voter mobilization activities and rates of political
participation, including electoral turnout (Gosnell, 1927; Green & Gerber,
2004; Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993). Presumably, campaign targeting leads
to higher turnout in battleground states than in the rest of the nation.
As Table 3 demonstrates, the voter turnout rate in the battleground states
was significantly higher than in the rest of the nation in both 2000 and 2004.
In addition, the difference in turnout between battleground and noncontested
states increased from the first election to the second. These findings suggest
that a greater proportion of potential voters are mobilized in battleground
states, either by targeted registration and get-out-the-vote drives or simply by
the increased attention and campaign activity within the state.
However, this differential turnout can be explained only in part by campaign effects. Many states with historically high turnout rates, principally
due to lenient voter registration regulations (Wolfinger & Rosenstone,
1980), also became electoral battlegrounds in 2000 and 2004. Minnesota
(76.8% voter-eligible turnout rate), Wisconsin (76.8%), Maine (72.3%),
and New Hampshire (70.3%) all allow same-day voter registration, whereas
Oregon (69.9%) conducts its elections entirely by mail-in ballot. At the
same time, states with low aggregate levels of education, such as much of
the South, consistently lag behind the rest of the nation in voting turnout.
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The campaigns largely ignored these states in 2004, considering them electorally safe for Bush. McKee’s (2002) analysis based on the 2000 election
concluded that differential voter mobilization accounted for about 3 percentage points out of the total 5 percentage point difference in turnout rates
between battleground and noncompetitive states.
Battleground state residents do appear, therefore, to benefit from the
mobilization of voters by presidential campaigns, although campaign
effects do not account for the entire difference in turnout rates between contested and safe states. Does the disproportionate attention directed at them
by presidential candidates make inhabitants of contested states more efficacious? As noted above, many critics of the electoral college draw a contrast between endlessly courted battleground state voters and the less
fortunate residents of noncompetitive states who, they argue, may well
interpret the lack of campaign activity in their communities as a sign that
they have no meaningful voice in the outcome of the election, that their
votes do not really count, and that the political system may therefore not be
as responsive to their concerns. If this claim is true, the electoral college
provides important psychic benefits to the minority of battleground state
residents at the expense of potential voters elsewhere in the nation.
Table 4 presents public opinion data drawn from the 2004 National
Election Study. Respondents are divided into two groups based on their
home state; those living in one of the 15 states identified in Table 1 as targets of television ad campaigns during the fall of 2004 were classified as
battleground state residents.
As one might expect, residents of battleground states are much more
likely than others to predict a close electoral outcome in their state (t = 7.1,
p < .001). Even so, nearly half of the inhabitants of uncontested states also
foresee a competitive race, suggesting that many respondents fail to receive
the message that their state is being conceded to one party or the other. We
wonder whether the disproportionate attention given to battleground state
residents indeed causes citizens elsewhere in the nation to feel as if their
votes have less weight.
Unsurprisingly, residents of campaign battlegrounds report significantly
more persuasion and mobilization efforts, as campaigns, parties, and interest groups reliably concentrate their get-out-the-vote efforts on politically
competitive states. Yet this activity does not appear to bolster the efficacy
of battleground state residents. Two National Election Study items measuring feelings of efficacy produce near-identical results among both groups of
respondents: a question measuring agreement with the statement, “People
like me don’t have a say in what government does” and an item asking
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Table 4
Mobilization and Efficacy in Battleground States, 2004
Battleground (%)
Nonbattleground (%)
Do you think the presidential race will be close here in (state) or will [candidate named/one
candidate] win by quite a bit?
Will be close
69.0
46.9
Win by quite a bit
31.0
53.1
ta = 7.10***
As you know, the political parties try to talk to as many people as they can to get them to
vote for their candidate. Did anyone from one of the political parties call you up or come
around and talk to you about the campaign this year?
Yes
63.6
36.3
No
36.4
63.7
ta = –8.7086***
Other than someone from the two major parties, did anyone (else) call you up or come
around and talk to you about supporting specific candidates in this last election?
Yes
25.2
14.2
No
74.8
85.8
ta = –4.47***
Some people say that no matter who people vote for, it won’t make any difference to what
happens. Others say that who people vote for can make a difference to what happens.
Where would you place yourself? (5-point scale recoded 0-1, where 0 = makes no
difference, 1 = can make a difference)
0.74
0.76
(.01)
(.01)
ta = –1.34
“People like me don’t have any say about what the government does.” Do you agree
strongly, agree somewhat, neither agree nor disagree, disagree somewhat, or disagree
strongly with this statement?
Agree strongly/somewhat
47.1
47.2
Disagree strongly/somewhat
52.9
52.8
ta = 0.03
How much do you feel that having elections makes the government pay attention to what
the people think—a good deal, some, or not much?
A good deal/somewhat
92.1
92.7
Not much
8.0
7.3
ta = 0.37
Note: N = 1,212.
Source: American National Election Studies (2004).
a. Cell entries represent a two sample t test with equal variances. Although several of the
dependent variables reported are dichotomous, the large sample size means the binary distribution is approximated to the normal distribution.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001, two-tailed.
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whether elections make the government “pay attention to what the people
think.” Similarly, residents of noncompetitive states are as likely as voters
in targeted states to agree that who one votes for can make a difference to
what happens in the nation. Our findings are consistent with Wolak (2006),
who found no evidence that battleground state residents have higher levels
of campaign interest or discuss politics at greater rates than other voters.
Although targeted mobilization efforts in battleground states seem to produce higher turnout, the concentration of campaign efforts within a subset
of the nation does not lead to different levels of efficacy in the two groups
of states, either by raising interest and engagement within electoral battlegrounds or by depressing investment in the political system elsewhere in
the nation.
How much envy should most Americans feel toward the residents of battleground states who attract so much attention from candidates and interest
groups every 4 years? Most people prefer not to be bothered by telephone
calls or knocks at the door urging them to vote, become annoyed by traffic jams
and other inconveniences caused by candidate appearances in their community,
and harbor an intense dislike of political advertising (Memmott, 2004; Pisik,
2004). Voters forced to endure such determined courting every 4 years do
not even feel significantly more efficacious than residents of safe states,
despite the additional electoral power they supposedly enjoy. We conclude
that the advantages that accrue to battleground state voters courtesy of the
electoral college are largely limited to an elevated level of voter turnout as
a result of targeted mobilization efforts by candidates, parties, and interest
groups, with additional instrumental or psychic benefits appearing modest
at best.
How Would Electoral College Reform
Affect Campaign Strategy?
Political reforms, when instituted, sometimes fail to resolve the problems
they were designed to address. In other cases, existing deficiencies are rectified, but new, even more damaging flaws are introduced. For these reasons,
advocates of reform strengthen their case when they augment their criticisms
of the current system with a convincing argument that their preferred alternative will, in fact, represent an improvement over the status quo.
The electoral college is, to be sure, an imperfect institution, and many of the
criticisms leveled at it are entirely appropriate. But more attention should be
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paid to the likely empirical consequences of its reform or abolition. In particular, critiques of the electoral college who focus on the battleground state phenomenon, lamenting the tendency of presidential campaigns to court the
residents of certain states while ignoring others, overlook the probability that
candidates would continue to target their resources toward particular geographic subgroups of voters even under a system of direct popular election.
We cannot predict for sure how potential changes to the current system
of presidential selection would affect candidate behavior. But we may begin
what should be an energetic discussion among scholars of American presidential elections about the probable real-world effects of electoral college
reform—an exercise that seems noticeably lacking in previous studies.
Perhaps individuals on either side of the normative debate will rethink their
positions when confronted with empirical evidence or perhaps exposure
will harden their existing beliefs. In either case, we consider the effort a
valuable one.
Under a system of direct popular election, candidates no longer have reason to acknowledge state boundaries. All votes are of precisely equal mathematical value no matter where they are cast. Yet the severe practical
limitations placed on presidential campaigns would endure even after reform.
Resources, principally time and money, would remain limited—in fact, might
seem even more so given the vastly expanded field of play. Abolition of the
electoral college would not bring an end to campaigns driven by strategic calculation. Candidates cannot realistically compete everywhere or engage
every voter; inevitably, each campaign would decide, just as now, to direct
resources toward some identifiable populations and not others.
Modern campaigns are largely waged through the media, whether free
(news organizations) or paid (advertising spots). In 2004, candidates, parties, and affiliated groups spent more than US$600 million on television
advertising, concentrated almost entirely in battleground states (Edsall &
Grimaldi, 2004). It is likely that media markets, not states, would be relevant geographic subdivisions under a system of direct election. Even today,
campaign consultants think in terms of media markets when buying
advertising time or seeking local news coverage, but the specific markets
emphasized are determined by calculations of state-level competitiveness
(Althaus, Nardulli, & Shaw, 2002; Franz, Rivlin, & Goldstein, 2006; Shaw,
2006). This is not a recent practice; strategists as far back as Kennedy’s
1960 presidential campaign used media market boundaries to organize
within-state activities.5 Absent the constraints imposed by the electoral college, other factors will dictate which markets—and, by extension, which
voters—receive the most attention from candidates.
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There are over 200 media markets in the United States.6 The cost of advertising varies widely from one to another, based not only on population size
within the market but also on other demographic characteristics that affect the
attractiveness of the audience to potential advertisers. In the fall of 2004, the
most expensive media market for prime-time advertising was Los Angeles,
which cost US$3,204 per ratings point (in other words, to reach 1% of the
households in the market), whereas US$11 bought a prime-time ratings-point
worth of advertising in Glendive, Montana, the nation’s smallest market (see
Table 5). Even taking the vast population difference into account, Los Angeles
remains a pricier market than Glendive because it contains higher proportions
of young residents and viewers with high incomes—a more valuable target
audience for most commercial advertisers.
How would the campaigns choose which media markets to target?
Evidence indicates that they would follow much the same strategy as they
do today: attempt to maximize the number of persuadable, or swing, voters
targeted per dollar of advertising cost (Arterton, 1993; Shaw, 2006). If the
electoral college is abolished, candidates seeking the swing vote need not
confine themselves to competitive states. In general, the more populous an
area, the more swing voters it has; campaigns today employ polling and
analysis of previous election returns to precisely estimate the number of
persuadable voters in any given geographic location, targeting campaign
resources accordingly. To provide a simulation of campaign strategy, we
have developed our own swing measure. First, we calculate a normal vote
for each media market in the United States by averaging the two-party vote
in each of the five presidential elections from 1988 to 2004. We then compute the mean absolute deviation from that figure or the average amount by
which the vote in a particular election differs from the 20-year average—
the swing. Multiplying the swing percentage by the number of voters in the
media market in 2004 gives us an estimate of the number of swing voters.
Table 6 divides the nation’s media markets into three categories of
roughly equal population, using the measurement of swing voters described
above and data on market cost from a standard industry report. These findings demonstrate that advertisers pay a premium to reach the residents of
large metropolitan areas. The top 10 markets contained 31.6% of the swing
voters nationwide (and just 29.4% of all voters), and a prime-time ad campaign cost an aggregate US$14,859 per ratings point (or exposure to 1% of
households) in these markets. For a substantially lesser amount of
US$10,737 per ratings point, a campaign could reach 33.6% of the nation’s
voters (and 35.8% of its swing voters) by sponsoring ads in each of the
smallest 155 markets across the nation.
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Goux, Hopkins / Empirical Implications of Electoral College Reform
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Table 5
Media Markets by Cost (Fall 2004) and Normal Democratic
Vote (1988-2004)
10 Most Expensive Media Markets
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY-NJ-CT-PA
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA
Chicago, IL-IN
Boston-Manchester, MA-NH-VT
Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV-PA
Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
Atlanta, GA-AL-NC
Houston, TX
10 Least Expensive Media Markets
Butte-Bozeman, MT
Eureka, CA
Zanesville, OH
Twin Falls, ID
Ottumwa-Kirksville, IA-MO
Casper-Riverton, WY
Great Falls, MT
North Platte, NE
Helena, MT
Glendive, MT
Cost-per-Point
(Prime Time)
Normal
Democratic Vote
US$3,204.00
2,981.00
1,685.00
1,485.00
1,263.00
1,175.00
1,106.00
1,097.00
868.00
777.00
54.1
59.5
66.7
58.5
59.5
56.3
57.5
40.7
44.9
43.2
25.00
25.00
25.00
23.00
22.00
20.00
19.00
17.00
13.00
11.00
48.3
55.9
43.5
33.2
51.1
37.2
44.9
30.0
47.9
41.2
Note: The normal Democratic vote is the average Democratic percentage of the two-party vote
in the five elections from 1988 to 2004.
Source: SQAD Media Market Guide (2004, Summer), Tarrytown, NY: SQAD.
Table 6
Advertising Strategy: The Swing Voter Scenario
Media Markets
(DMAs)
Top 10
Next 40
Bottom 155
Percentage
of Total
Vote, 2004
Percentage
of Swing
Vote, 2004
Cost per
Ratings
Point
Cost per Ratings
Point per 10,000
Swing Voters
29.4
37.0
33.6
31.6
32.6
35.8
US$14,859
11,370
10,737
US$113.4
84.1
72.3
Note: DMAs = designated market areas.
Source: Election data compiled by authors. Cost of media calculated from figures provided for
the cost of prime-time advertising in the fall of 2004 in each media market in the SQAD Media
Market Guide, Summer 2004, published by SQAD, Inc., Tarrytown, NY.
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Figure 1
Media Market by Voter Population, 2004
Figures 1 and 2 confirm the high degree of congruence between the most
populous and most expensive per capita media markets. The dark-shaded
markets in Figure 1 are the largest 10 markets in the nation, home to about
a third of the American population. They correspond with the large population centers of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta,
Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Mediumsized markets are concentrated in slightly smaller metropolitan areas:
Cleveland, Tampa, St. Louis, Buffalo, Nashville, and comparable places.
The smallest markets are concentrated in thinly populated areas: upper New
England, much of the Deep South, and across the interior West.
In Figure 2, media markets are once again divided into terciles, this time
by the cost per capita of one prime-time ratings point (equal to reaching 1%
of the market’s population). The geographic pattern is much the same, confirming that advertisers pay a premium to reach television viewers in large
metropolitan areas, rendering the audience in smaller population centers
more cost-effective for political campaigns to target.
We should not therefore assume that campaigns will necessarily concentrate most of their advertising resources in each of the largest metropolitan areas under a system of direct popular election. More likely, campaigns
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Goux, Hopkins / Empirical Implications of Electoral College Reform
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Figure 2
Per Capita Advertising Costs by Media Market, 2004
will make extremely complex calculations about where their precious budgets will have the biggest positive effect. Given its relatively low advertising rates and abundant supply of swing voters, Florida would likely remain
a top campaign target in a postreform world. The major markets in
California and Texas, in contrast, command very high advertising rates
compared to the number of voters they reach, and one or both campaigns
could decide that limited funds would be best deployed elsewhere.
Abolition of the electoral college certainly does not guarantee that residents
of any particular large metropolis will experience substantially more direct
attention, at least in terms of paid media, than they do under the existing
system.
Other forms of campaign activity may follow somewhat different patterns. Candidate appearances might well focus on the largest media markets, although the relative novelty of a visit to a moderately sized market
could stimulate more press and popular attention. Less common, however,
would be the multiday bus and train trips through small cities and towns
that have become a staple of recent campaigns; such excursions would
probably not reach enough voters to be worth the time.
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What if both campaigns were to emphasize mobilization of the party
base over appeals to swing voters? In this scenario, the candidates are not
competing for the same population. Rather than expecting both campaigns
to make similar calculations, and thus mirror each other strategically, we
assume that each side would target the geographic areas in which it enjoys
electoral dominance, with the hope that a higher turnout in those locations
would increase its national margin in the popular vote.
This potential state of affairs should not reassure those observers who
believe that American politics has become unacceptably partisan and ideologically polarized in recent years. Democratic candidates would presumably work to maximize turnout in coastal California and the urban
Northeast, whereas Republicans would mobilize across the Deep South and
interior West. More voters might be exposed to one campaign message, but
fewer to both, further deepening partisan geographic divisions.
In general, the Democratic base vote is heavily concentrated in large cities
and inner suburbs outside the South, whereas the Republican base is more
evenly distributed across geographically dispersed areas: outer suburbs, smaller
cities, and towns. The location of the Democratic base in the most populous
metropolitan areas becomes a relative liability for the party in targeting these
voters by paid media. Large, Democratic leaning media markets tend to be
more expensive per voter than the smaller, pro-Republican markets. In Table 7,
media markets are divided into three roughly equipopulous categories:
the Democratic and Republican base markets, where the normal vote for the
prevailing party’s presidential candidate averaged at least 55% during the 19882004 period and the remainder group of competitive markets. The cost-perpoint and cost-per-point-per-voter ratios are highest among the Democratic
base and lowest in the predominantly Republican areas, reflecting disproportionate Democratic loyalty in large media markets with high per capita advertising rates. To the extent that television advertising is effective as a
mobilization tool, Republicans could spend their money more effectively by
targeting the smaller media markets where they enjoy greater political strength.
A comparison of Figure 3 with Figures 1 and 2 reveals that the Democratic
base is indeed concentrated in the populous, high-cost markets of the Northeast,
Midwest, and Pacific Coast. Republicans can reach their comparably sized base
with more cost-effectiveness by running advertising campaigns in the small,
inexpensive media markets common across the South and interior West.
Although each of these markets is much smaller than the average Democratic
base market, they add up to a roughly equal population when combined and
command much lower advertising rates.
These scenarios strongly suggest that the unequal geographic distribution
of campaign activity would not end with the abolition of the electoral college.
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Table 7
Advertising Strategy: The Base Vote Scenario
Media Markets
(DMAs)
Democratic base
Competitive
Republican base
Percentage Percentage Percentage of
of Total of Democratic Republican
Vote, 2004 Normal Vote Normal Vote
37.6
30.8
31.6
43.4
30.8
25.8
31.8
30.7
37.6
Cost per
Ratings
Point
Cost per Ratings
Point per
10,000 Voters
US$14,951
11,186
10,829
US$3.3
3.0
2.8
Note: DMAs = designated market areas.
Source: SQAD Media Market Guide.
Figure 3
Media Market by Partisanship, 1988-2004
To be sure, the identity of the voters or location of the communities that are
deemed most critical to electoral victory can be expected to change if the institution governing the process of selecting presidents is fundamentally
reformed. But presidential campaigns would still struggle with the need to
deploy limited resources within a vast and populous nation; lacking the ability to engage everywhere, they will be forced to choose their battles. In some
ways, Democrats might reap an advantage from reform; in some ways,
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Republicans would gain an edge; and other consequences might well arise that
cannot be currently foreseen.
It seems likely that the geographic scope of partisan conflict would
broaden somewhat from its current concentration within one third of the
nation but would still fall well short of a true national election. Such an
expansion would presumably increase the cost of presidential elections and
therefore provide an advantage to the candidate or party with the largest
financial resources. Historically, Republicans have raised more funds than
Democrats, although this tendency has started to change in recent years.
Whichever candidate held a funding advantage in any particular election
would benefit disproportionately from abolition of the electoral college.
It is difficult to tell how closely these predictions match the visions of
reform proponents. Most prefer to concentrate on the alleged deficiencies
of the current system of presidential selection than to describe in detail how
the popular vote alternative would lead to different, better campaigns in the
future. Although a simple national popular election would, in theory, give
all citizens an equally weighted vote, campaigns would be compelled by
strategic imperatives to target voters in certain geographic areas more than
others to maximize scarce resources. Those who currently view such
behavior as an unacceptable consequence of the electoral college could
well be equally dissatisfied with the postreform world.
Conclusion
Although the possibility of significant reform or abolition of the electoral college via constitutional amendment remains vanishingly small, the
recent proliferation of state level legislation and ballot initiatives seeking to
modify the allocation of electoral votes suggests that change may still be in
the offing. By awarding their electors to the national popular winner, a few
populous states could, in effect, replace the electoral college without the
need for ratification by three quarters of the states as provided for in the
Constitution. Whether or not such efforts succeed, debate over the electoral
college will doubtless continue in the pages of academic journals, within
the news media, and on the floor of legislatures across the nation.
The newfound scholarly focus on the observable consequences of the
electoral college’s institutional features, such as its profound effects on the
strategic behavior of candidates, is a welcome development that promises to
add a strong empirical component to the discussion. But reform advocates
who justify their position by citing the practical—as opposed to the theoretical—
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imperfections of the current system, such as its (supposedly damaging) effect
on campaign strategy, must make their case for the practical superiority on
that count of their favored alternative. We do find evidence in favor of several
claims made by critics of the electoral college, although other assumptions do
not appear to survive empirical scrutiny. On the whole, we conclude that the
flaws caused by the electoral college’s effects on candidate behavior are
somewhat overstated by its detractors, whereras the alternative process of a
direct popular election might well prove less revolutionary than many assume
if it were indeed enacted into law.
Notes
1. Maine and Nebraska allocate two electoral votes to the candidate finishing first in the
statewide vote and one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. In practice,
neither state has ever split its vote in the electoral college.
2. See Goux (2006) for evidence indicating that the news media coverage of “battleground
states” has increased substantially since the 1960s.
3. Emphasis in original.
4. These 12 states are in increasing order of margin between the candidates in the two-party
vote: (1) Wisconsin, (2) Iowa, (3) New Mexico, (4) New Hampshire, (5) Ohio, (6) Pennsylvania,
(7) Nevada, (8) Michigan, (9) Minnesota, (10) Oregon, (11) Colorado, and (12) Florida.
5. See, for example, memo from Guild, Bascom, and Bonfigli, August 29, 1960, Robert F.
Kennedy Pre-Presidential Papers, Box 38, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. For the 1988
and 1992 Bush campaign plans see report, “1992 Guide to Targeting: Minimum Vote Analysis
Goals and 1988 Vote at the ADI Level,” April 28, 1992, Robert Teeter Collection, Box 85,
George Bush Presidential Library.
6. Within the advertising industry, media markets are known as designated market areas,
or DMAs, and are defined by Nielsen Media using counties (parishes in Louisiana) as the constituent units. We exclude Alaska from our analysis because it is not divided into counties.
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Darshan J. Goux is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University
of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on electoral politics and the relationships
between elite decision-making, voter behavior, media norms, and political institutions.
David A. Hopkins is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University
of California, Berkeley. He specializes in the political geography of the United States and its
effects on candidates, elections, and political institutions.
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