If Donald Trump wishes, at all costs, “Find 11,780 votes” in Georgia to overthrow the presidential election, according to the revelations of Washington post, it is actually 32,507 votes, which he would have needed to be able to stay four more years in the White House. But not just any. Defeated by seven million votes in the popular vote (i.e. 4.45% of the total vote) on November 3, the Republican president, whose defeat was approved by the electoral college on December 14, despite his accusations without repeated evidence of fraud, however, would have been able to win the presidential election if these few thousand voters located in four states (Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and the second district of Nebraska) had voted for him rather than for Joe Biden.
Thanks to the intricacies of the American electoral system (in forty-eight states, the winner wins all of the elected voters, regardless of the gap), Donald Trump therefore came very close to renewing his feat of 2016: winning the presidential election. by leaving its main rival a large lead in the popular vote.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton missed the White House for tens of thousands of votes located in three states
Four years ago the Republican already had 2.9 million votes behind (or 2.09% of the vote) on Hillary Clinton, but he had managed to win narrowly in some key states, which allowed him to win quite widely at the level of the electoral college with 306 voters against 232. The former US Secretary of State had missed the White House for a few tens of thousands of votes located in three states, as many media had it reported at the time. If Hillary Clinton had succeeded in convincing 77,739 more people or had convinced 38,871 voters of Donald Trump to vote for her in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, she would have spent the last four years leading states. -United.
As American electoral map specialist Dave Wasserman noted, in this context, Biden’s victory in 2020 is more narrow than Trump’s in 2016.
To sum up: Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes in 2016, whereas Biden is on track to win it by 7 milli… https://t.co/WU6PHWL1Rz
Low scores theoretically make it possible to “reverse” an election
According to the calculations of World, in the last nine elections, the losing candidate should have convinced on average just over 241,000 voters to vote for him rather than for the winner to win. But this figure varies greatly from year to year. Thus, Bob Dole should have “returned” more than 561,000 votes in 1996 (out of eleven states), when Al Gore could have limited himself to 269 small votes in Florida, in 2000, to become the 43e American president.
If 2000 is the tightest election, Richard Nixon’s victory in 1972 is by far the biggest
In 2008, Mike Sheppard, then a student at MIT, had the idea of calculating the minimum number of voters who should have changed their vote to alter the final result for each presidential election since 1836. He had determined that on average he a little less than 401,000 votes had to be “returned” to win. If 2000 is the closest election, Richard Nixon’s victory in 1972 is by far the biggest. At the time, George McGovern, the Democratic candidate (who had obtained only 17 of the 538 votes of the major voters) would have had to convince 3.1 million Republican voters located in twenty-six states to win.
However, as Mike Sheppard explains in World, trying to find the smallest number of voices to return, the result obtained is not necessarily the most probable: “I wanted to find the fewest number of votes to return to change the outcome of an election, whether the scenario is likely or not. If in some cases, like in 2000 with the 269 votes in Florida, it was obvious, it is not always the case. “
Thus, our scenario for 2020 imagines that the voice “reversals” would occur in four states: Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and the second district of Nebraska. However, in reality, it would be more complicated to convert 11,046 Democratic voters into Republican voters in Nebraska (or 3.27% of the total in the state) than to “return” the more than 40,000 votes necessary to change the country. result in Pennsylvania (0.58%).
In reality, the four states where the gap between the two candidates was the smallest and which were therefore the “quickest” to switch during this last election were (most or least likely) Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Donald Trump would then have needed to convince more than 120,000 voters of Joe Biden to vote for him. And even by removing the voters of Wisconsin (not necessary for his victory), it is nearly 100,000 Democratic voters that he should have convinced in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania.
A much simpler model would cure all the headaches associated with the various calculations and developments of statistical models: direct universal suffrage. But while an initiative to ensure victory for the winner of the popular vote has been launched and has garnered the support of sixteen states so far (the equivalent of the votes of 196 major voters), it is still far from reaching. the 270 votes necessary to be able to award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote. If it succeeded, the legal challenge would then be sizeable. Not to mention that with key states which would thus lose a large part of their appeal to candidates who are perpetually in search of their good graces, the electoral campaign would then take a completely different turn.
