One need only look at how the 'margin' is CONTINUALLY increasing based on what Dems need to win National elections compared to Republicans and how it is not just the Electoral College (although that is the worst, see below) but the systemic (and deliberate) changes made by the Supreme Court, as they see Republicans ability to win elections via a democratic free vote, slipping further and further away as their agenda grows more disconnected from the people and towards Corporations and oligarchs and Fascist type rule.
I specifically recall back when it was only a 1% differential predicted and needed for CLinton to win and how that shifted ever upwards from Obama to Biden.
Presidential elections
Political scientists usually measure Electoral College bias in
percentage points, ..
A common metric is the difference between:
- the national popular vote, and
- the "tipping-point state" (the state that provides Electoral Vote #270).
That produces an estimate of the Electoral College advantage.
Approximate historical picture for Democrats to control of Congress and Presidency:
| Era | Estimated Democratic popular vote needed to be reasonably safe |
|---|
| Clinton (1992–96) | roughly even to +1 point |
| Bush era (2000–04) | +1 to +2 points |
| Obama era (2008–12) | around +2 points |
| Trump era (2016–20) | +3 to +4 points |
| |
Converting to raw votes
Today's electorate is much larger than it was during Clinton's presidency.
Very roughly:
- 1 percentage point today ≈ 1.5–1.6 million votes
- 2 points ≈ 3 million votes
- 3 points ≈ 4.5–5 million votes
- 4 points ≈ 6–6.5 million votes
So when commentators said Democrats might need
3–4 percentage points nationally to comfortably win the Electoral College, that translated into roughly
5–6 million votes, depending on turnout.
We saw those numbers revised up to
8 million vote neighborhood after Biden's 2020 win because he won the popular vote by over
7 million votes, yet fewer than
50,000 votes across a handful of swing states changing would have flipped the Electoral College.
