Winning Cheap?

It’s mathematically possible to win the presidency of the entire country handily in the electoral college with around 11 percent of the popular vote.

Can that be correct?

I took the state results from the 2008 presidential election and calculated the cheapest electoral votes (the least number, at 50 percent plus 1 voter, to obtain an electoral vote), from Wyoming on down. Then I scrolled down the list until there were over 270 electoral votes—for an actual vote total of under 15 million, out of 131.3 million voters in that 2008 election.

Doesn’t seem right, but maybe the more mathematically inclined can help us out here.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

The Church in the Age of Therapy

Matthew Loftus

In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…

Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot

Anna Farrow

On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…

The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen

Mike Aquilina

Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…