Electoral College Benefits GOP More Now Than in Last 25 Years: Report

The Republican Party has long held an advantage over Democrats when looking at the Electoral College map, and a new report has found that the GOP has never benefitted more from the election system in the last quarter of a century than it does today.

In the 25th Anniversary edition of its Partisan Voting Index (PVI), the independent Cook Political Report determined that "Republicans are enjoying a stronger advantage than at any point in the 25-year history of the Cook PVI."

The Cook PVI scores show that a Republican presidential candidate can lose the popular vote by a narrow margin "and still win an Electoral College majority. That, however, is almost impossible for a Democrat to replicate," Amy Walter, the editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report, wrote on Friday.

In fact, the report found that if the pattern continues to hold into the next presidential election, the Democrats would need to win the popular vote by at least 3 percentage points—although Walter notes, "more realistically 4 points"—in order for it to translate into a presidential victory.

That means the Democrats would need to hold onto the margin of victory that President Joe Biden was elected to the White House with in 2020—4.45 percent—in order to keep the presidency.

A win that big is not only a hurdle for Biden, who is currently facing his lowest approval ratings, but it has been uncommon for most presidents in the past 25 years.

Between 1996 and 2020, only two presidents, aside from Biden, have won election with more than a 4 percent margin in the popular vote: former President Barack Obama in 2008 and former President Bill Clinton in 1996. In 2012, Obama won reelection with just under a 4 percent margin of victory in the popular vote.

Since 2000, no Republican presidential candidate has taken more than 51 percent of the popular vote. Despite the fact that former President George W. Bush's 2004 reelection is the only time in the last six presidential elections in which a Republican candidate won more than 48 percent of the popular vote, the GOP has still won the presidency in half of those elections.

If this trend continues into the next presidential election, Walter said, "The 2024 GOP nominee taking just 48 percent of the two-party popular vote could still win a comfortable Electoral College majority."

This would mean that should former President Donald Trump run for a second term, he would need to come away with a bigger victory than in his 2016 win. In the 2016 election, Trump won just over 46 percent of the popular vote.

This year's Cook PVI also found that there are fewer swing states today than there were in 1997. The number of swing states has dropped from 19 to 13 since its first report.