Popular Vote Differing From Electoral Vote?

In our latest feature, we ask the question: With the popular vote differing from the electoral vote, what is the largest margin by which you can win the popular vote but still lose the presidential election?

America’s electoral system makes this question relevant in 2024 and for as long as the Electoral College remains enshrined in the Constitution. Like we pointed out in our Explaining the Electoral College feature, five times in 59 prior presidential elections has a candidate lost the popular vote nationwide but been elected president, anyway. In the four most recent examples, a Republican defeated a Democrat in this manner. A Democrat has never lost the popular vote but won the election.

Winning the Popular Vote But Losing the Electoral College

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Popular Vote Differing: What’s The Answer?

The answer is that there is no exact answer, at least not one that’s realistic.

Using the 2020 election as a guide, we noted that Biden could have lost the electoral vote even if he won among voters by about 4.4 points nationwide, provided a few states swung by about 22,000 votes total. Even this might be an extreme example to some, but it was very close to happening four years ago.

To that end, we can imagine four to five points being a realistic boundary for losing the election while winning the popular vote. That is to say, Candidate A wins the popular vote by four or so but loses the electoral vote to Candidate B. The wider the popular vote gap gets, however, the more warped the swings have to become at the state level to accommodate the result. Therefore, they become more unrealistic as the gap widens.

Batter Up: The Baseball Example

To give an example of how stark the unrealistic scenarios get of popular vote differing can be, picture the New York Yankees playing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. Imagine that the Yankees win the series in seven games, and in all four of their wins, they win 1-0. However, in the three games the Dodgers win, they win 10-0. In the Yankees’ four wins, they are plus-4 in runs, but in their three losses, they are minus-30. The Yankees have a run differential of minus-26 but win the series, outscored 30 to four. One would think the Dodgers clobbered the Yankees, but the total number of runs does not matter just like the total popular vote does not in American presidential elections.

Apply this now to the election. Imagine that Kamala Harris in 2024 wins all of her states by very narrow margins, including California, New York, New England, and so forth, to barely clip 270. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is winning by gigantic margins in all of his states, but sits at 268 electoral votes. He would win the popular vote in a landslide but lose the election, much like the Yankees pulled out just enough close games to get over the top. The odds of this happening are very remote, but that is also why it needs to be dismissed as unrealistic. The same goes for the reverse, if Harris landslides every state she wins but Trump narrowly wins 270 votes in tight contests everywhere else. This is not going to happen in 2024 in either direction.

How About in 2024?

While inside five points seems like a large and realistic margin for a candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election, there could be state-level swings which produce some very different results compared to 2020. Should Kamala Harris win the votes of the people, it could be by a smaller overall margin than Joe Biden’s, but she may yet end up with a similar electoral vote count. This does not mean that she needs to win the popular vote by at least five to win the election. It means that if it’s within a few points, the two vote outcomes could differ. The closer the nationwide vote is, the more likely there is to be a divergence.