2004: How would it have been if all states did it the Maine and Nebraska way?

[minionofmidas]

Except, of course, that "the Maine and Nebraska way" is a wee bit more comprehensive.
Maine is redistricted by commission (although the legislature votes on the commission's plan).

As for Nebraska's redistricting laws, although it's done by the legislature, I'll just quote fairvote.org:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[minionofmidas]

I'm just pointing out that that's how the result of the Electoral College would have been if electoral votes had been cast by congressional district + 2 for the state winner, irrespecive of how each state would go about drawing its districts

Dave

I know. I was just raising the minor point that it's not quite *entirely* fair to call that "the Maine and Nebraska way".

[minionofmidas]

Like I said in another thread, all of these proposed changes that break up the electoral votes of states, either by PR or by congressional district, would likely have the effect of increasing the relative strength of the smaller states even more, because smaller states (on average) tend to be more homogeneous and provide bigger margins of victory to whoever wins the state.  So if you break up the electoral votes of the states, you'll likely see the bigger states giving a larger share of their EVs to the loser of their states than you see in the smaller states.  Since, at least at present, the GOP tends to do better in smaller states, these scenarios are likely to give the GOP candidate a slight bonus in the EC over what they get now.

By quintile:

Largest: 4 Bush, 6 Kerry
Second: 6 Bush 4 Kerry
Third : 8 Bush, 3 Kerry
Fourth: 8 Bush, 2 Kerry
Fifth: 5 Bush, 5 Kerry

Well, OK, if you look at it like that, then there doesn't look like much of a trend.  But Kerry got 51% of his electoral votes from just four states (CA, NY, IL, PA), while Bush only got 34% of his electoral votes from the four biggest states he won (TX, FL, OH, GA).  It seems that the Democrats are more dependent on those really big states, that would, on average, lose a larger share of their EVs to the loser of those states in a system like this.

Or look at it another way.  In both 2000 and 2004, you had two roughly 50/50 elections, where the EV count was close to being even between the two parties.  Yet the GOP won about 30 states in each election, while the Dems won about 20 states.  So it seems that, on average, Dem. states are bigger than GOP states.

Actually, the trend is clearly visible from jim's post as well, except for the Dem's comparative strength in the really wee states. 30% of states won by Kerry were among the top ten largest, 13% of Bush's states were. Also remember that the third quintile states are far closer, in absolute terms, to Wyoming than to California or even Florida.