Surrendering the Big States

A long time ago, I made the observation that someone could win the presidency by just winning the 11 largest states. This, of course, required a candidate to win states as divergent as Texas and New York. I left it as a unlikely hypothetical theory.

Thinking about the most recent election I realized that McCain didn't win many heavily populated states. So I looked it up and found that of the 11 most populated states, McCain only won two, Texas and Georgia. This left Obama with the other 9, a grand total of 222 electoral votes. That's not to say he won them easily, North Carolina and Ohio were neck-and-neck during the month leading to the election.

The Electoral College system has been criticized for over-representing small states, the chances of winning off of this advantage is close to nil. Republicans are generally thought to be favored in this over-representation due to the western states, however, the New England states, which favor the Democrats, are just as over-represented. In fact, the combined vote of the 15 most over-represented states is completely canceled out by California, and of those 15, Obama won 7 and McCain won 8, coincidentally, the same as in 2004. Certainly, the combined population of all those states is less than half of California, so fewer voters would need to be won over, but strategically, it's probably better to focus on winning one state than 15.

The Democrats winning in the big states give them a huge advantage, whereas just a fifty percent win in California would guarantee 55 votes, an average fifty percent win among the most over-represented states would not even guarantee half those electoral votes. In fact, Obama won an average of around 52% among the most over-represented states, but won less than half of their electoral votes.

While it's unlikely that the Democrats could maintain their wins among the big states, the advantage they have with the big states means that they have to be competitive in fewer states. By continuing to focus on rural voters, "Real America", the Republicans have basically conceded any state with a major population center. This could present a real problem for Republicans in future elections.