Representation, Swing, and Bias in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1872-1988

In this paper we extend the research program on the seats-votes relationship to the U.S. electoral college. Borrowing liberally from the work of King and Browning (1987), we develop measures of representational form and partisan bias in the relationship between popular vote proportions and electoral vote proportions for each presidential election from 1872 to 1988. Two major findings emerge from our analysis: (1) the electoral college is dominated by a majoritarian representational form, with popular vote winners usually capturing a substantially higher proportion of the electoral vote than would be suggested by their popular vote proportion; and (2) contrary to the conventional wisdom of a Republican bias, the electoral college has a Democratic partisan bias for most of the years under study, particularly in the years since the end of World War II

Contingent vote · Democracy · Economics · Electoral college · Group voting ticket · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Presidential system · Representation (politics) · Spoilt vote · Voting · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Game Theory and Voting Systems · Law

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