Given Historical Trends 2008 Should Be a Close Election

There is a wonderful site called Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections which has a lot of historical data about presidential elections. Just for fun we did some research on what has been the average Democratic vote compared to the average Republican vote over the last 10 presidential elections, starting in 1968.

Over those 10 elections the Democratic percentage of the popular vote has been 44.64 while the average Republican vote has been 49.17. A big reason for the difference are the large Republican victories in 1972, 1980, and 1984. During the last three elections, however, the average Democratic vote has been much higher. Democratic candidates Clinton, Gore, and Kerry averaged 48.63% of the popular vote. During that same period of time Dole, Bush and Bush averaged 46.44% of the popular vote. Those figures indicate a very evenly split American electorate.

Of course, as we saw in both 2000 and 2004, the American system of having voters choose electors who then actually vote for the president helps conservatives. In the lsat two elections George W. Bush averaged 49.3% of the popular vote but averaged 51.77% of the electoral college vote. This bias comes from the fact that each state, no matter what its population, is assured three votes in the electoral college: one for each U.S. Senator and one for a constitutionally guaranteed Congressional representative.

A state like South Dakota has three electoral votes and an estimated population of 752,103. This means that each electoral vote represents 250,701 people. In California there are 55 electoral votes and an estimated population of 35,594,342. This means that each electoral vote represents 671,170 people. That is quite a discrepancy and applies to other states such as Alaska, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho. Those states, combined with South Dakota, have a total electoral college vote of 24, four more than Ohio. Their total population, however, is 7,310,773, or about 64% of Ohio's.

Given the fact that the electorate is pretty evenly divided and given the fact that the electoral college has a small state/conservative bias that helps Republicans, the election of 2008, if historical trends are any indication, will be a very close election.