Nate Silver's analysis of Biden's Electoral College chances renews calls to repeal it altogether

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Nate Silver's analysis of Biden's Electoral College chances renews calls to repeal it altogether

September 2, 2020

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A protest against the Electoral College in 2016 in Michigan.

Sarah Rice/Getty Images

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden could earn an even bigger popular vote margin than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 and still lose to President Trump.

That's the reality FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver revealed in a Wednesday tweet, in which he showed how winning the popular vote would affect Biden's chances of winning the Electoral College. Silver's analysis showed Biden needs a very solid popular vote just to have a good chance of winning, once again renewing arguments against the Electoral College's entire existence.

The New York Times' Jamelle Bouie took a constitutional approach to his thread tearing apart the Electoral College.

my stated position on the framers and the electoral college is that "intent" doesn't really factor into it and that the EC was a last-minute kludge by exhausted delegates meant to guarantee the election of george washington and nothing else.
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) September 2, 2020

MSNBC's Chris Hayes forecast a dark future if the system wasn't abolished.

Wildly perverse and utterly indefensible system that will sooner or later lead to deep crisis if not changed. https://t.co/nYZ0FKwtHw
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 2, 2020

And The New Yorker's Evan Osnos argued the Electoral College doesn't exactly fit into America's vision of democracy.

If I read about this system in, say, Turkmenistan, I’d pity them. https://t.co/mdQV07THrj
— Evan Osnos (@eosnos) September 2, 2020

Silver's analysis stems from the fact that Biden will likely pull big margins of victory in states that are already solidly blue, as well as the fact that the winner of most states' popular votes get all their Electoral votes no matter how close that popular margin was.