How to Count to 270 an Electoral College Worksheet with the 2016 Map

Every four years, cable television puts a giant touch-screen map in front of a pundit and invites him to wave his arms. Here is a secret: you do not need the touch screen. You need a pencil, the back of an envelope, and the ability to add and subtract. The Electoral College is the most argued-about piece of machinery in American politics and the one that fewer people can actually work. Folks, that is a fixable problem.

So here is a worksheet. It has ten steps, it is repeatable for any election, and we run it on the 2016 map as the worked example because the numbers are final, the margins were tight, and the result still starts arguments. Do it once with a pencil and you will never be fooled by a map again.

The setup: 538, 270 and a baseline

Three short steps get the page ready.

Step 1: Start with 538

The Constitution gives each state a number of electors equal to its number of House members plus its two senators. The Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961, gave the District of Columbia the number it would have if it were a state, but no more than the least populous state, which comes to three. The arithmetic:

• House of Representatives: 435
• Senate: 100 (two per state, fifty states)
• District of Columbia: 3
• Total: 435 + 100 + 3 = 538 electors

Step 2: Find the finish line

To win you need a majority of the electors. Half of 538 is 269. A majority is more than half, so the number is 269 + 1 = 270. Write 270 at the top of the page. Everything that follows is a measurement against that line.

Step 3: Choose a baseline

The easiest way to analyze an election is to start from the one before. In 2012, President Obama won 332 electoral votes and Governor Romney won 206. Check that: 332 + 206 = 538. Good. Write those two numbers in two columns. These are the 2012 results, and the 2016 election was fought on the same set of state-by-state electoral allocations, since both used the apportionment from the 2010 census. (A new census changes the allocation; the 2024 and 2028 elections use the figures from the 2020 census. Check the National Archives website for the table that applies to the election you are counting.)

The 2016 count

Now we apply the worksheet to a real election, and the numbers are the ones the states certified.

Step 4: Apply the flips

Now list every state, or district, that changed sides between the baseline and the election you are studying. In 2016, the following moved from the Democratic column to the Republican column:

Add: 29 + 20 + 18 + 16 + 10 + 6 + 1 = 100. Check by pairs: 29 + 20 = 49; 49 + 18 = 67; 67 + 16 = 83; 83 + 10 = 93; 93 + 6 = 99; 99 + 1 = 100.

Now subtract and add:

• Republican total: 206 + 100 = 306
• Democratic total: 332 - 100 = 232
• Sanity check: 306 + 232 = 538.

That matches the pledged electoral votes of 306 for Donald Trump and 232 for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Notice how the worksheet forces you to say what changed, not just who won.

Step 5: Measure the cushion

The cushion is the winner's total minus 270. For Trump: 306 - 270 = 36. That means he could lose any set of states totaling 36 or fewer electoral votes and still win. Write that number in a box.

The loser's gap is the mirror image: 270 - 232 = 38. Clinton needed 38 more electoral votes.

The stress tests

A total tells you who won. A stress test tells you how close it was and why.

Step 6: Run the swing exercise

This is the heart of the worksheet. Take a state or group of states from the winner's column, move it to the loser's, and recompute. Three states are the famous ones: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Michigan and Pennsylvania had last gone Republican in 1988 and Wisconsin in 1984, and all three went Republican in 2016. Together they total 16 + 20 + 10 = 46.

Look at the sixth row. Move Pennsylvania and Michigan, 36 electoral votes, and Trump lands on exactly 270, which is a win with nothing to spare. Our cushion of 36 was exactly the size of those two states. The only way for the result to flip using only these three states was to take all three.

Now find the tipping-point state. List the winner's states from narrowest margin to widest and subtract them one at a time until the winner drops below 270. By the certified results, Michigan was Trump's narrowest win, followed by Pennsylvania and then Wisconsin, all under one percentage point. Subtract Michigan: 306 - 16 = 290. Subtract Pennsylvania: 290 - 20 = 270, still a win. Subtract Wisconsin: 270 - 10 = 260, below the line. Wisconsin is the tipping-point state. Anyone who tells you the election turned on one state is telling you a half-truth: it turned on the last domino that mattered.

Step 7: Check the margins

Now bring in the popular vote in the swing states, because a map shows who won and not by how much. The certified margins were roughly these, and I urge you to verify them against each state's official canvass, because I want you to rely on the record and not on me:

• Michigan: about 10,700 votes
• Pennsylvania: about 44,300 votes
• Wisconsin: about 22,700 votes

Add them: 10,700 + 44,300 + 22,700 = 77,700, or about 78,000 votes in three states. Those three states gave Trump 46 electors. In the same election, well over a hundred million ballots were cast nationwide, and Clinton won the national popular vote by nearly three million. Both statements are true at once. That is exactly how the Electoral College works, and it is why campaigns spend their money in a few states.

The fine print

The last three steps catch the details that trip up the touch-screen experts.

Step 8: Apply the Maine and Nebraska district rules

Two states do not award all their electors as a block. Maine awards two electors to the statewide winner and one to the winner of each of its two congressional districts, for a total of four. Nebraska awards two to the statewide winner and one for each of its three districts, for a total of five. Maine has done this since 1972 and Nebraska since 1992.

In 2016, Maine split: three electors for Clinton (the statewide winner plus the first district) and one for Trump (the second district). That is why the table in Step 4 lists "Maine's Second Congressional District" as a one-vote flip, and why the Republican total is 306 and not 305. Nebraska's five electors all went to Trump that year. Make a habit of writing these two states as separate lines on any worksheet.

Step 9: Subtract the faithless electors

The 306 and 232 are the electors pledged to each candidate. The actual votes cast by the Electoral College in December 2016 were different. Two Republican electors in Texas voted for other people, and so did five electors pledged to Clinton, in Washington State and Hawaii. The arithmetic:

• Trump: 306 - 2 = 304
• Clinton: 232 - 5 = 227
• Votes for other people: 2 + 5 = 7
• Check: 304 + 227 + 7 = 538

A "faithless elector" is one who casts a ballot for someone other than the candidate to whom the elector was pledged. The Supreme Court settled the legal question in 2020. In Chiafalo v. Washington, a unanimous Court held that a state may enforce an elector's pledge and may penalize an elector who breaks it. A companion case from Colorado was decided the same day. The practical effect is that states can bind their electors, and many have written laws that do. If you want to know your own state's rule, read your state's election statutes on its legislature's website.

Step 10: Know the tie rule

What if nobody reaches 270? The Twelfth Amendment says the House of Representatives chooses the President from among the three candidates with the most electoral votes, with each state delegation casting one vote. A candidate needs a majority of the states: 26 of 50. The Senate chooses the Vice President from the top two, each senator voting individually. It has happened, in the election of 1800 for a different reason and again in 1824, and we tell the story in Four Elections That Tested the Electoral College, From 1800 to 1888. A 269-269 tie is possible, and a worksheet is how you find out whether any combination of states could produce it.

A second worked example: the map of 2000

Run the same worksheet on a different election and you will see why it is worth the trouble. In 2000 the allocation came from the 1990 census, and Florida had 25 electors. The result: George W. Bush 271, Al Gore 266, and one Washington, D.C. elector who left her ballot blank. Check: 271 + 266 + 1 = 538.

The cushion is 271 - 270 = 1. That is the thinnest possible. Now run the swing exercise.

• Move Florida (25) to Gore: Bush 271 - 25 = 246, Gore 266 + 25 = 291. Gore wins.
• Move only New Hampshire (4) to Gore, leaving Florida alone: Bush 271 - 4 = 267, Gore 266 + 4 = 270. Gore wins, with exactly the number he needed.

Do you see what the worksheet just told you? The famous recount in Florida is only one of two ways the election could have gone the other way. A candidate who had won one small New England state would have made Florida irrelevant. Florida was decisive because of how the dominoes had fallen elsewhere, not because Florida was magic. In Florida the certified margin was 537 votes out of about six million cast, and the arguments over it ended up before the Supreme Court. Pundits like to tell a story with one villain and one turning point. The worksheet is a better teacher: it says the margin was thin everywhere and the fight was over which thin margin would be counted.

Three questions to ask of any map

When somebody shows you an electoral map, whether on television or on a campaign website, run it through three quick checks.

1. What is the baseline? A map that says "this state is in play" means nothing until you know what it was last time and how far it moved. Ask for the previous result and the size of the swing.
2. Where are the margins? A state won by half a percentage point and a state won by twenty points are the same color on a map and entirely different on a worksheet. The tipping-point calculation in Step 6 is a better guide than the color.
3. Is the arithmetic closed? Add up the electoral votes on the map. Do the two columns and any undecided states total 538? You would be amazed how many maps do not. If it does not add, somebody has made a mistake or is trying to sell you something.

Why defend this machine at all

Every worksheet raises the same question: why do we do it this way? Here is the strongest argument against the Electoral College, and I will state it fairly. A candidate can win the most votes nationwide and still lose, as happened in 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016. A voter in a state that is not competitive can feel that her vote does not count. Why not just count the votes and give the office to whoever gets the most?

The conservative case in reply has four parts. One: the Constitution sets up a federal Republic, a union of states, and the Presidency is chosen through that structure, not through a national referendum. Two: the system forces candidates to assemble a coalition spread across many states and regions, and not simply run up the score in a few huge metropolitan areas. Three: a close national result is easier to settle when it is broken into fifty state contests, as opposed to a single national recount of well over a hundred million ballots. Four: amending the Constitution requires broad agreement, and the argument for change should be made in the open by amendment and not by a side compact. You may find these persuasive or not. What matters is that you know what you are arguing about, and the worksheet makes that possible. To see how the mechanism runs from Election Day to the final count, read How the Electoral College Works, From Election Day to the Joint Session.

Your turn: the blank worksheet

To run this on any future election:

1. Write 538 and 270.
2. Get the electoral votes for each state from the National Archives table for that election.
3. Pick a baseline (the last election) and write the two totals.
4. List the states that flip, and add up their votes.
5. Move the totals and check that they sum to 538.
6. Compute the cushion (winner minus 270) and the gap (270 minus loser).
7. Run the swing exercise for every combination of states you care about.
8. Treat Maine and Nebraska as district-by-district.
9. Subtract any faithless electors.
10. Check your arithmetic, then check the margins at your state election office.

If you want to see how the map arrived at the 2016 shape, read How Donald Trump won the three states Republicans had lost for a generation and, for the long view, How the Republican Electoral Map Moved Across Four Eras from 1896 to 2016. For the primary side of that race, see The 2016 Republican Primary and How a Field of Seventeen Became One. And when the next presidential cycle approaches, our elections page is the place to start.

The bottom line

• You need 270 of 538 electors. Count it yourself: 435 plus 100 plus 3 is 538, and half plus one is 270.
• A short list of states usually decides the election. In 2016, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were worth 46 electors and about 78,000 votes, and Wisconsin was the tipping point.
• Watch the small print: Maine and Nebraska split their electors by district, and faithless electors can change the final count by a handful.
• Do not trust any map that does not show the margins. Check the numbers at your state's election website and at the National Archives.
• If you want the rules changed, the Constitution tells you how: an amendment. Make that argument openly, and bring your arithmetic.