Does Trump or Harris have an Electoral College advantage? What political experts say

Polls show the presidential race is tightening toward a possible toss-up, but how close is it actually?

The answer, to a large extent, will depend on which candidate has an advantage in the Electoral College.

But so far — amid an election cycle that’s been upended by President Joe Biden’s last-minute decision to withdraw from the race — the broad contours of the coveted advantage are largely unknown.

“There’s actually a little bit of disagreement,” John Kowal, the vice president of program initiatives at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit policy institute, told McClatchy News. “We’re in a flux because voting coalitions are changing, so it’s making it a little harder to measure.”

Former President Donald Trump likely has the edge over Vice President Kamala Harris, but that leg up could be smaller than it was in 2016 and 2020, according to Kowal and other political experts.

What is an Electoral College advantage?

Simply put, the advantage is determined by the disparity between the national popular vote and electoral votes — meaning it can only be guessed at until Election Day.

“One party has an advantage when they receive more than one-half of the electoral votes for one-half or less of the popular vote,” David Lublin, a professor of government at American University, told McClatchy News.

So, for example, if a candidate wins 300 of the total 538 electoral votes, while garnering, say, 48% of the popular vote, they would have the Electoral College edge.

“There isn’t always an advantage for one party or another, but when there is an advantage, it’s usually a function of what they call wasted votes,” Kowal said.

So-called wasted votes are votes that have no added value towards the Electoral College count. These include surplus Democratic votes in solidly blue states, like California, on top of the simple majority needed to garner all of the state’s electoral votes in the winner-take-all system.

“Because one party may have votes over-concentrated in an area, they’d be less efficiently translated into electoral votes,” Lublin said.

In contrast, votes are considered efficient when they add up to slim majorities, allowing a candidate to clinch electoral votes by narrow margins. These razor-thin victories have recently been seen in a small number of swing states — including Pennsylvania and Michigan — where campaigns tend to focus their efforts.

“These battleground states are typically hard fought and candidates or their surrogates visit them often,” Martha Kropf, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, told MccClatchy News. “They have enough Electoral College votes to matter and polling is tight.”

Which party has historically had the upper hand?

The Electoral College advantage has shifted back and forth between the two major parties over the years as voter demographics have changed, but in recent elections, it’s been held by Republicans, experts said.

In 2016, Trump had the advantage, when he lost the popular vote by two points to Hillary Clinton but beat her in the Electoral College 304 to 227.

He was victorious because “his vote was distributed very efficiently,” Lublin said. “He won a number of states by very small amounts.”

Trump retained the advantage going into 2020, despite ultimately losing the election. Biden won the popular vote by 4.5 points but only garnered 306 electoral votes — close to what Trump won in 2016 without that popular vote lead.

Who has the advantage now?

There’s some disagreement among election watchers about whether Trump holds onto his well-established edge in the Electoral College.

The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election analysis site, shows Republicans holding a historic edge.

“When looking exclusively at the Electoral College map, Republicans are enjoying a stronger advantage than at any point in the 25-year history of the Cook PVI,” the site states.

“It takes careful and accurate polling in the battleground states to know this, but as we have learned in the past, polling may not be right on,” Kropf said. “Trump had the edge in key states, and perhaps he is losing it.”

In contrast, Larry Sabato’s Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, shows the advantage being completely different, Kowal said.

“He thinks it’s possible,” Kowal said, “that this (Republican) advantage might evaporate or even slightly benefit Democrats.”

Driving the analysis that Trump may be losing his Electoral College advantage are two demographic phenomena developing over recent elections, multiple experts said.

The first is that Republicans are beginning to win certain states, particularly rural ones like West Virginia or Nebraska, “by highly inefficient numbers,” Lublin said.

Trump has “been running up the vote in some of the plains states and western states,” Kowal said. “So (his) higher margins of victory in those states are actually reducing the Electoral College advantage.”

The second is that, in recent elections, Democrats have been losing some votes in stronghold states, where they still retain majorities, Lublin said.

These demographic shifts could, in theory, create a perfect storm that would see Trump’s edge blunted, or even perhaps forfeited to Harris.

With that being said, Lublin believes Trump will hold onto the advantage come November, though it may be smaller than in year’s past.

“You can only sort of tell once the votes are cast,” he added.

Dissatisfaction with the current system

The debate over who holds the Electoral College advantage is playing out against a backdrop of deep opposition among the public to the current system of electing the president.

Almost two-thirds of Americans, 65%, favor throwing out the Electoral College and having the winner of the popular vote become president, according to a 2023 poll from the Pew Research Center. That figure includes 82% of Democrats and slightly less than half of Republicans(47%).

“It’s obviously a terribly undemocratic way of picking the president,” Kowal said. “It really deforms our national elections, where the whole focus is on a handful of swing states.”

One argument for keeping the current system in place, according to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, is that it prevents the election from hinging on earning votes from large population centers.

“By forcing presidential candidates to address all Americans during their campaigns, not just those in large cities, the Electoral College has the added benefit of eschewing radical candidates for more moderate ones,” the organization’s website states.

Despite the general dissatisfaction with the Electoral College, doing away with it is easier said than done. There are just two paths to such a change, Kowal said.

The first would be an amendment to the Constitution, which, given the current partisan divides in Congress, would be highly unlikely.

The second would be through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is an agreement among states to award their electors to the winner of the country’s popular vote.

The initiative would take effect if states with a majority of the electoral votes, 270 or more, adopt it. Currently, 18 states and Washington, D.C., — including California, New York and New Mexico — have signed it into law. They represent just 209 electoral votes, so many more states would need to agree for this method to work.

So, at least for the foreseeable future, the Electoral College appears set to remain the method of deciding the president, meaning the Trump and Harris campaigns could live or die by the fickle advantages it provides.

This story was originally published August 8, 2024 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Does Trump or Harris have an Electoral College advantage? What political experts say."