Ep. 44: Inverted outcomes resulting from the Electoral College system

AEA Research Highlights

Only four times in US presidential history has the candidate with fewer popular votes won the election. Two of those occurred recently in 2000 and 2016, leading to calls to reform the system.

Far from being a fluke, this peculiar outcome of the US Electoral College has a high probability in close races, according to a paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

Authors Michael Geruso, Dean Spears, and Ishaana Talesara say that regardless of changes in demographics and institutions, the odds of so-called inverted elections in close races has been about the same over the last 200 years.

Geruso says that while Republicans benefit today from the chance of an inverted election, it hasn’t always been that way.

He recently spoke with Tyler Smith about why the Electoral College causes inversions and what he thinks about moving to a national popular vote.