[EL] State-by-state popular vote statistics for presidential elections from 1796 (or as early as possible) through 2016

Fri Jul 19 13:58:30 PDT 2019

Mark, 

For the 1789-1824 elections, take a look at A New Nation Votes https://elections.lib.tufts.edu . The data was collected by Philip Lampi, who apparently almost fanatical about collecting accurate election figures for presidential and state elections. As for Dave Leip's site, I have no more idea than you about his sources. 

Bob Mutch 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Mark Scarberry" <mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu> 
To: "Rob Richie" <rr at fairvote.org> 
Cc: "Election Law Listserv" <law-election at uci.edu> 
Sent: Thursday, July 18, 2019 12:00:20 PM 
Subject: Re: [EL] State-by-state popular vote statistics for presidential elections from 1796 (or as early as possible) through 2016 

I asked a while back whether anyone had responded to Michael Rosin's analyses. He points out that a national popular vote system would have given a great deal of power to states -- almost all in the South as it turned out -- where the voting margins would be high. If Georgia gives 93% of its popular vote to Jefferson, but Pennsylvania splits 52-48 for Adams (numbers based on a recollection of something I saw a while back that may or may not be accurate), Jefferson's margin in Georgia would have given it much more influence than Pennsylvania on the outcome of the election. That is true even if the total number of voters in Georgia is substantially less than in Pennsylvania. That problem would have existed until Reconstruction began and then would have reemerged under a popular vote system when African Americans then were effectively disenfranchised after Reconstruction. 

So it isn't clear that a national popular vote system would have disadvantaged the slave states at the time of the Founding. 

Madison and others from the South must have been smart enough to know that. Unless they thought that voters in northern states would vote for their preferred candidates by fairly high margins, they would have understood that the electoral college system was not necessarily in their interest. All of this would have depended on the relative number of votes in the states and the expected margins. In my example, you could calculate how much larger the popular vote in Pennsylvania would have to be for Adams's 4% advantage in Pennsylvania to balance out Jefferson's 86% advantage in Georgia. I haven't done that calculation yet. 

One reason I want to get the state-by-state popular vote totals for presidential elections is to check Rosin's analysis and do those calculations. 

This certainly raises a question whether adoption of the electoral college would have been seen as an advantage for the South (and whether it actually turned out to be an advantage). It may undercut the current narrative that the Convention chose the electoral college system to benefit the slave states (the ones in the South, I mean -- slavery was legal everywhere at that time, I think). 

Congress is a different matter; the 3/5 clause gave the South a substantial bonus in the House -- though not in the contingent selection procedure if the House ended up choosing the president, with each state's delegation having a single vote. 

My thanks to Charles for his reference to the CQ volume. Based on the snippet I've been able to see, it does not seem to include the raw popular vote totals for the states that used popular vote (at-large or by district) to appoint electors. I will try to get the full volume and see what is included. 

So I'm still hoping someone has a link to an authoritative source for the raw popular vote totals. 

Again, I'm also hoping someone will know how reliable the information is that Dave Leip has on his webpage. He has raw popular vote totals by state, but I don't know whether I can trust his numbers. 

Mark 

Prof. Mark S. Scarberry 
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law 

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 3:23 AM Rob Richie < rr at fairvote.org > wrote: 

I'll note that quite a few states did not allocate electoral votes according to a statewide popular vote until Andrew Jackson’s presidency (and not every state held a presidential election until 1872, with another blip in 1876 before all states holding elections starting in 1880, albeit without suffrage rights for a majority of adult adjust until 1920). FairVote a few years ago did a piece on how use of the winner take all rule and use of statewide popular votes here: 
https://www.fairvote.org/how-the-electoral-college-became-winner-take-all 

James Madison proposed banning the winner take all rule just as it was becoming the norm, notably. See. 
https://www.fairvote.org/why-james-madison-wanted-to-change-the-way-we-vote-for-president 

When people quote Alexander Hamiton on the "most excellent" Electoral College or tell modern reformers "so you think you're smarter than the framers," they may not realize that the framers and the opening generation of American political leaders did not make use of the Electoral College anything like we do today. But they also weren't timid about change. Perhaps it was their revolutionary spirit, perhaps it was that most had been part of a living debate about the roots of government structures and systems, but they were quick to change presidential selection rules and practices that weren't working - both by statute at the state level and with constitutional change like the 12th amendment, that was a major departure from the first Electoral College system. 

Ironically, we then got saddled with the winner take all rule by popular vote in states - not because it was a fair or effective national system of picking the president, but because it was in the self-interest of any particular state trying to maximize the advantages of its majority. And today we have a defenders of tradition less ready to take action for necessary changes. Or at least that's how I see it! 

Rob 

On Thu, Jul 18, 2019 at 5:53 AM Charles H Stewart < cstewart at mit.edu > wrote: 

<blockquote>

Try _Presidential elections, 1789–2008,_ Washington, CQ Press, 2010, starting at p. 190. 

Charles Stewart III 
MIT 
Sent from my iPad 

On Jul 18, 2019, at 4:25 AM, Mark Scarberry < mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu > wrote: 

<blockquote>

I am trying to find information about the popular vote in presidential elections by state from 1796 (or as early as possible) through 2016. I realize that, early on, some states' legislatures picked the electors, so that in some cases there would be no state popular vote data. 

Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, https://uselectionatlas.org/ , has such data going back to the 1824 election. Does anyone know whether his data is reliable? 

Mark 

Prof. Mark S. Scarberry 
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law 

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