An extreme case was in 1988, when Democrat Mike Dukakis was trailing Republican George Bush (the father) in mid-October and he came up with an 18-state strategy, just enough to capture an Electoral College majority. Dukakis won 10 of them (plus D.C.) and some of the eight he lost were quite close, like Pennsylvania and Illinois. But say that he had managed to squeeze victories in all of his eight missing states (the others being Connecticut, Vermont, Maryland, California, Ohio and Michigan) with the combined switch of 1,451,533 votes.
It sounds like a lot, but it’s only 1.6% of the 90.6 million votes cast for the two major contenders. So instead of losing by 7 million votes (8 percentage points), Dukakis would have lost by 4.2 million votes (5 percentage points), but he still would have had enough in the Electoral College to become president.
A much closer example was in 2004, when if Democrat John Kerry had another 118,601 votes in Ohio over George W. Bush (the son), Kerry would have won the state and the White House despite having 3 million fewer votes than Bush nationally.
So for both parties, it’s better for everyone to leave the 18th century behind.
One remedy for the Electoral College is to amend the Constitution, which is very difficult, but in this instance there’s a faster method: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. So far, 17 states, including New York and Minnesota, have joined. If four or five more join, the popular vote winner will always win the White House.
