Faithless electors in a 272 freiwall election

[Sir Mohamed]

HRC lost 5 electors in the EC when the final tally was cast. If she kept the big 3 (MI, WI & PA), she would have won with 278 EVs. Even with 5 faithless electors, it wouldn't have affected the election outcome. But what if NV voted for Trump and the big 3 went barely for her? The margin of error would have been very thin with just 272 EVs on election night. If she lost more than 2, the election would have gone to the House, where the GOP controlled a majority of state delegations.

Would these Dem electors still have voted the same way, if this was the result? De facto they would have overturned the election result and give it to Trump. And what about the VP tally? A Trump-Kaine admin?

[TML]

I think pledged electors would be less likely to become faithless if the winning candidate's total number of pledged electors is 275 or less (recall how no Bush electors dared to become faithless in 2000).

[Del Tachi]

HRC's faithless electors were just a useless political ploy, if she had won a narrow majority you can bet that all of them would have been lockstep in supporting her.

I do sometimes consider a situation with a 269-269 Electoral College tie, where one elector defects to the national popular vote winner to give him/her a 270-268 majority.  I do think a partisan elector could be motivated to believe that outcome is preferable to an election decided by the House.

[Sir Mohamed]

HRC's faithless electors were just a useless political ploy, if she had won a narrow majority you can bet that all of them would have been lockstep in supporting her.

I do sometimes consider a situation with a 269-269 Electoral College tie, where one elector defects to the national popular vote winner to give him/her a 270-268 majority.  I do think a partisan elector could be motivated to believe that outcome is preferable to an election decided by the House.

I'm not sure latter could happen. A Dem elector voting for a GOPer like Kasich (if he won the NPV) wouldn't surprise me that much, but vise versa? I dunno. Maybe a traditional conservative voting for Biden over Trump in such a scenario. But if 2020 ended in a tie, pressure on electors of both sides would be extremely high not to defect from their party.