Dominance: The New Democratic Voting Base Is an Electoral Steamroller

Worse for Republicans would be if the Democratic Electoral College advantage is real – and produced by a Democratic advantage in the art of electioneering. There’s some evidence that Democrats simply had an across-the-board field operation advantage in the last two cycles. If that’s true, it’s presumably concentrated in swing states and could produce the observed effect by increasing Democratic turnout in those states. Unlike the first two possibilities, this one won’t go away on its own, but it is fundamentally fixable; after all, there’s no reason to believe that Democrats have some sort of inherent advantage in this area.

But that’s not going to work if the worst-case scenario turns out to be true.

It’s possible that the Democratic Electoral College advantage observed in both 2008 and 2012 is simply a consequence of demographics – that Democrats are currently scattered in such a way that, all else being equal, fewer Democratic votes are “wasted” (for example by winning California by a large amount) than Republican votes (such as they do in winning Texas by a large margin).

If that last one is the real reason – and it certainly might be – then there’s not much Republicans can do about it; it’s not as if they can convince lots of people from Utah to move to Colorado or get folks from West Virginia to move to Ohio.

Instead, it would mean that for however long the pattern lasts, Republicans will have a permanent disadvantage in presidential elections. That’s not unusual in American elections; Democrats right now appear to have a systematic disadvantage in both House and Senate elections due to how voters happen to be spread out – so, in a sense, a real Democratic advantage for the presidency only evens things out a bit.

It would, however, be a real change in how presidential elections have been fought for at least the last several decades. Republicans would be, in effect, starting every cycle two points behind. If it’s true – and I’m sure before long we’ll have reports from political scientists who have investigated each of the possibilities I suggested – then it’s a pretty big deal.