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The Electoral College Explained

A national popular vote would help ensure that every vote counts equally, making American democracy more representative.

• Electoral College Reform

In the United States, the presidency is decided not by the national popular vote but by the Electoral College — an outdated and convoluted system that sometimes yields results contrary to the choice of the majority of American voters. On five occasions, including in two of the last six elections, candidates have won the Electoral College, and thus the presidency, despite losing the nationwide popular vote. 

The Electoral College has racist origins — when established, it applied the three-fifths clause, which gave a long-term electoral advantage to slave states in the South — and continues to dilute the political power of voters of color. It incentivizes presidential campaigns to focus on a relatively small number of “swing states.” Together, these dynamics have spurred debate about the system’s democratic legitimacy.

To make the United States a more representative democracy, reformers are pushing for the presidency to be decided instead by the national popular vote, which would help ensure that every voter counts equally.

What is the Electoral College and how does it work?

The Electoral College is a group of intermediaries designated by the Constitution to select the president and vice president of the United States. Each of the 50 states is allocated presidential electors  equal to the number of its representatives and senators . The ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 allowed citizens in the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections as well; they have consistently had three electors.

In total, the Electoral College comprises  538 members . A presidential candidate must win a majority of the electoral votes cast to win — at least 270 if all 538 electors vote.

The Constitution grants state legislatures the power to decide how to appoint their electors. Initially, a number of state legislatures directly  selected their electors , but during the 19th century they transitioned to the popular vote, which is now used by  all 50 states . In other words, each awards its electoral votes to the presidential candidate chosen by the state’s voters.

Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia use a winner-take-all system, awarding all of their electoral votes to the popular vote winner in the state. Maine and Nebraska award one electoral vote to the popular vote winner in each of their congressional districts and their remaining two electoral votes to the statewide winner. Under this system, those two states sometimes split their electoral votes among candidates.

In the months leading up to the general election, the political parties in each state typically nominate their own slates of would-be electors. The state’s popular vote determines which party’s slates will be made electors. Members of the Electoral College  meet and vote in their respective states  on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December after Election Day. Then, on January 6, a joint session of Congress meets at the Capitol to count the electoral votes and declare the outcome of the election, paving the way for the presidential inauguration on January 20.

How was the Electoral College established?

The Constitutional Convention in 1787 settled on the Electoral College as a compromise between delegates who thought Congress should select the president and others who favored a direct nationwide popular vote. Instead, state legislatures were entrusted with appointing electors.

Article II  of the Constitution, which established the executive branch of the federal government, outlined the framers’ plan for the electing the president and vice president. Under this plan, each elector cast two votes for president; the candidate who received the most votes became the president, with the second-place finisher becoming vice president — which led to administrations in which political opponents served in those roles. The process was overhauled in 1804 with the ratification of the  12th Amendment , which required electors to cast votes separately for president and vice president. 

How did slavery shape the Electoral College?

At the time of the Constitutional Convention, the northern states and southern states had  roughly equal populations . However, nonvoting enslaved people made up about one-third of the southern states’ population. As a result, delegates from the South objected to a direct popular vote in presidential elections, which would have given their states less electoral representation.

The debate contributed to the convention’s eventual decision to establish the Electoral College, which applied the  three-fifths compromise  that had already been devised for apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. Three out of five enslaved people were counted as part of a state’s total population, though they were nonetheless prohibited from voting.

Wilfred U. Codrington III, an assistant professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and a Brennan Center fellow,  writes  that the South’s electoral advantage contributed to an “almost uninterrupted trend” of presidential election wins by southern slaveholders and their northern sympathizers throughout the first half of the 19th century. After the Civil War, in 1876, a contested Electoral College outcome was settled by a compromise in which the House awarded Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency with the understanding that he would withdraw military forces from the Southern states. This led to the end of Reconstruction and paved the way for racial segregation under Jim Crow laws.

Today, Codrington argues, the Electoral College continues to dilute the political power of Black voters: “Because the concentration of black people is highest in the South, their preferred presidential candidate is virtually assured to lose their home states’ electoral votes. Despite black voting patterns to the contrary, five of the six states whose populations are 25 percent or more black have been reliably red in recent presidential elections. … Under the Electoral College, black votes are submerged.”

What are faithless electors?  

Ever since the 19th century reforms, states have expected their electors to honor the will of the voters. In other words, electors are now pledged to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state. However, the Constitution does not require them to do so, which allows for scenarios in which “faithless electors” have voted against the popular vote winner in their states. As of 2016, there have been  90 faithless electoral votes  cast out of 23,507 in total across all presidential elections. The 2016 election saw a record-breaking  seven faithless electors , including three who voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was not a presidential candidate at the time.  

Currently, 33 states and the District of Columbia  require their presidential electors  to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. Only 5 states, however, impose a penalty on faithless electors, and only 14 states provide for faithless electors to be removed or for their votes to be canceled. In July 2020, the Supreme Court  unanimously upheld  existing state laws that punish or remove faithless electors.

What happens if no candidate wins a majority of Electoral College votes?

If no ticket wins a majority of Electoral College votes, the presidential election is  sent to the House of Representatives  for a runoff. Unlike typical House practice, however, each state only gets one vote, decided by the party that controls the state’s House delegation. Meanwhile, the vice-presidential race is decided in the Senate, where each member has one vote. This scenario  has not transpired since 1836 , when the Senate was tasked with selecting the vice president after no candidate received a majority of electoral votes.

Are Electoral College votes distributed equally between states?

Each state is allocated a number of electoral votes based on the total size of its congressional delegation. This benefits smaller states, which have at least three electoral votes — including two electoral votes tied to their two Senate seats, which are guaranteed even if they have a small population and thus a small House delegation. Based on population trends, those disparities will likely increase as the most populous states are expected to account for an even greater share of the U.S. population in the decades ahead. 

What did the 2020 election reveal about the Electoral College?

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential race, Donald Trump and his allies fueled an effort to overturn the results of the election, spreading repeated lies about widespread voter fraud. This included attempts by a number of state legislatures to nullify some of their states’ votes, which often targeted jurisdictions with large numbers of Black voters. Additionally, during the certification process for the election, some members of Congress also objected to the Electoral College results, attempting to throw out electors from certain states. While these efforts ultimately failed, they revealed yet another vulnerability of the election system that stems from the Electoral College.

The  Electoral Count Reform Act , enacted in 2023, addresses these problems. Among other things, it clarifies which state officials have the power to appoint electors, and it bars any changes to that process after Election Day, preventing state legislatures from setting aside results they do not like. The new law also raises the threshold for consideration of objections to electoral votes. It is now one-fifth of each chamber instead of one senator and one representative.  Click here for more on the changes made by the Electoral Count Reform Act.

What are ways to reform the Electoral College to make presidential elections more democratic?

Abolishing the Electoral College outright would require a constitutional amendment. As a workaround, scholars and activist groups have rallied behind the  National Popular Vote Interstate Compact  (NPV), an effort that started after the 2000 election. Under it, participating states would  commit to awarding their electoral votes  to the winner of the national popular vote.

In other words, the NPV would formally retain the Electoral College but render it moot, ensuring that the winner of the national popular vote also wins the presidency. If enacted, the NPV would incentivize presidential candidates to expand their campaign efforts nationwide, rather than focus only on a small number of swing states.

For the NPV to take effect, it must first be adopted by states that control at least 270 electoral votes. In 2007, Maryland became the first state to enact the compact. As of 2019, a total of 19 states and Washington, DC, which collectively account for 196 electoral votes, have joined.

The public has consistently supported a nationwide popular vote. A 2020 poll by Pew Research Center, for example, found that  58 percent of adults  prefer a system in which the presidential candidate who receives the most votes nationwide wins the presidency.

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Electoral College’s Advantages and Disadvantages Essay

Introduction, disadvantages of the electoral college, advantages of the electoral college, works cited.

Made up of 538 electors, the Electoral College votes decide the president and vice president of the United States of America. The Electoral College membership is made up of 435 representatives, 100 senators, and 3 electors. In the United States, the electorate does not directly elect the president and the vice-president. On the contrary, the responsibility to do so is vested on the electors in the electorate college. The 538 members are appointed through a popular vote on a state-by-state basis (Kleeb par. 7). The number of electors represented in the electoral college is equal to the number of congress in each state (Kleeb par. 2).

Electors are loyal to a particular candidate for both the president and vice president’s office. In the United States, all the states elect their representatives in the Electoral College on a winner-take-all basis except for Maine Nebraska states (Kleeb par. 8). Every elector is required by law to cast one vote for the president and another for the preferred vice-president. For an individual to be considered a winner in the office of the president and vice-president, they must receive an absolute majority, which currently stands at 270 votes (Kleeb par. 8).

Critics argue that the Electoral College’s dependence on a popular vote is a bone of contention. This process does not allow the national wide popular candidate to be the automatic winner of the elections. It leaves a situation whereby the national wide popular candidate might not be the winner of the election. Most people feel that the winner-take-all elections are the most appropriate. The Electoral College process is biased as the swing states receive the most attention (Kozlowski 34).

Swing states are states that have a long history of a tendency to vote either Republican or Democratic candidates. Candidates pay less attention to such states if electorates have a history of consistently voting for the rival party. Also, the Electoral College process discourages voter turnout in a very significant way. The candidate with the highest popular vote in every state receives all the electoral votes in the states with clear favorites (Kozlowski 34). This discourages the electorates who feel that their vote might not make an impact in such states especially if the voter wanted to vote contrary to the state’s favorite. This system discourages the candidates from campaigning for voter turnout (Kozlowski 34). The system also gives the small states more power to influence the outcome of an election a factor that has always favored the Republican Party.

The Electoral College system makes it pointless and abortive to support a candidate who is not competitive in your state. This leads to the candidates concentrating on fewer states hence ignoring the majority of the country’s voters (Kozlowski 35). The Electoral College process can lead to a situation whereby the winner of an election is not necessarily the winner of the popular vote. The winner of the electoral votes takes precedence and may become the president even after losing on the popular vote but this situation has very serious implications on presidential powers. This weakens the presidential powers hence making governance very difficult since there are mandates that are given to the president only through the popular vote.

The above misgivings notwithstanding, the Electoral College system has positive attributes that make it acceptable. One of the very significant positive sides of the system includes the fact that it prevents victory based on urban areas (Lawler par. 10). This process does not give monopolistic powers to the highly populated areas as other systems like the winner-take-all. For a candidate to win, he or she must pay attention to even the smallest states since concentrating on heavily populated states does not guarantee a win. The system also provides the space for flexibility about voting laws in different states. States can formulate their laws and affect changes on their systems freely without affecting the national elections.

The Electoral College process also is famed for maintaining separation of powers (Lawler par. 5). Having a directly elected president through the popular vote can lead to tyranny. The devolution and separation of powers in the different branches of government were a calculated move in the constitution to provide checks and balances (Lawler par. 7). Having a directly elected president asserts that a president assumes a national popular mandate that can easily compromise and undermine other branches of the government (Lawler par. 8). The system also limits the entrance of a third party hence favoring a two-party system. Although some people see this as a demerit, it has brought the country some political stability. It also reduces the probability of the minority and interest groups swaying voters (Lawler par. 13).

This essay has discussed the negative and positive sides of the Electoral College system in the United States of America. The paper has shown how the system works identifying the possible negative ramifications that the system can influence. However, the paper notes that the system has some positive sides as well and has gone further to discuss some of the advantages of the electoral system.

Kleeb, Jane. Fail: Sen. McCoy’s Partisan Electoral College Bill . 2011. Web.

Kozlowski, Darrell. Federalism , United States, US: inforbase publishing, 2010. Print.

Lawler, Augustine. The Electoral College: top 10strenthgs and weaknesses . 2008.Web.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Electoral College — The Importance Of The Electoral College

The Importance of The Electoral College

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Published: Mar 14, 2024

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The Electoral College: a Founding Compromise

This essay about the Electoral College traces its origins back to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, highlighting it as a compromise between electing a president by Congress or a direct vote from the people. It underscores the system’s role in balancing concerns about direct democracy and the concentration of power, with electors intended to be informed citizens making the final decision. The essay also touches on the transition from legislative selection of electors to voter-driven choices and discusses the ongoing debates around the Electoral College’s relevance. It reflects on the system’s ability to combine federal and democratic elements, ensuring representation across the United States while sparking discussions on democratic representation and fairness. Overall, the piece presents the Electoral College as a unique solution to a political dilemma, embodying the innovative spirit of American governance and the complexities of establishing a lasting democratic system.

How it works

Back in the sweltering summer of 1787, as the Founding Fathers debated over how the fledgling United States should pick its president, the Electoral College was born—not out of unanimity but as a classic American compromise. This unique method, woven into the fabric of the U.S. Constitution, was their answer to a question that had them split down the middle. Should Congress elect the president, or should the people have their say directly? The Electoral College emerged as a middle path, a bit of both, showing early on that America was going to be a place of innovative solutions.

At the heart of it, the Electoral College was a workaround. It addressed the fears of those worried about handing over such a crucial decision to a potentially uninformed populace, while also countering concerns about giving Congress too much power, which could upset the balance of the new government. It was a way to let the people have their say but through a layer of electors—meant to be wise and informed citizens—who would make the final decision.

This system kicked off with George Washington’s election and has been the way presidents are elected ever since. It’s a setup where each state gets a certain number of electors (equal to its total number of Senators and Representatives), blending the country’s federal structure with a dash of democratic seasoning. Initially, state legislatures mostly picked these electors, but the shift to letting voters directly choose them became the norm by the 19th century.

Despite its longevity, the Electoral College has always been a bit of a lightning rod for debate. It’s had its awkward moments, like when the winner of the popular vote didn’t wind up in the White House. Yet, supporters argue it keeps smaller states on the political map and ensures a wide spread of attention from presidential candidates.

The creation of the Electoral College is a classic tale of American political innovation—finding a way through disagreement with a compromise that has lasted more than two centuries. It reflects the challenges and complexities of setting up a new government system that aimed to balance various interests and has continued to spark conversation about how democracy works in America. As we move forward, the Electoral College stands as a reminder of the Founding Fathers’ ability to create a resilient and adaptable system of governance, even as it prompts ongoing debates about representation and fairness in the American democratic experiment.

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When Politicians Invoke the Founding Fathers, Remember This

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

As things stand now, 48 states are set to allocate their electors this November according to the winner of the popular vote in their state. Whoever gets the most votes — no matter the margin — gets all the electors.

In the remaining two states, Maine and Nebraska, the process works a little differently. There, electoral votes are partly divvied up on a proportional basis. In Nebraska, two of its five electoral votes are given to the winner of the statewide popular vote, and the other three are given to the victor in each of the state’s three congressional districts. In Maine, two of the state’s four electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote, and the other two are split between its two congressional districts.

In the 2020 presidential election, for only the second time since it adopted this system in 1991, Nebraska split its electoral votes between the two candidates on the ballot. Donald Trump won the state and its First and Third Congressional Districts, and Joe Biden won the Second Congressional District, representing parts of Omaha and surrounding areas.

Biden won that election with 306 electoral votes; the Nebraska elector did not make a difference. But in an exceedingly close election — say, an election between an unpopular incumbent and an equally unpopular challenger (himself a former incumbent) — it could. Which is why Nebraska Republicans have begun an effort, backed by Trump , to end its quasi-proportional allocation of electoral votes.

Nebraska Republicans seem to know that this move is a vigorous exercise in partisan venality, which is why they’ve tried to defend it with a time-honored appeal to the founding fathers. “It would bring Nebraska in line with 48 of our fellow states, better reflect the founders’ intent and ensure our state speaks with one unified voice in presidential elections,” Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, wrote in a statement. (Trump called it “ a very smart letter .”)

It is well within the rights of the Nebraska Legislature to adopt the winner-take-all system that most other states use to allocate electors. But I am less interested in the substance of the change than I am in the justification for the decision. That is the common, even ubiquitous, idea that the current form of the Electoral College represents the original intent of the drafters and ratifiers of the Constitution. The problem is simple: It’s not true.

Any attempt to impute an original intent to the framers’ construction of the Electoral College runs into the basic problem that it was, even compared with everything else in the Constitution, a last-minute and hastily constructed compromise meant to get around a large set of almost intractable differences.

Delegates to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 were consumed with argument over the method and mode of presidential selection. In the first vote taken on the issue, early in the convention, most delegates favored legislative selection. But several of the most influential delegates, among them James Madison of Virginia, thought that this threatened the separation of powers and thus the basic structure of the new government.

Madison observed in his notes that it was “a fundamental principle of free government that the legislative, executive and judiciary powers should be separately … and independently exercised.” As such, it was “essential, then, that the appointment of the executive should either be drawn from some source or held by some tenure that will give him a free agency with regard to the legislature.”

Madison and his like-minded allies — the Pennsylvanians James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, for example — favored a national popular vote to choose the president. Direct election by “the people” (for the most part, property-owning white men) would guarantee executive independence and filter for men of “distinguished character or services.” On the other side were Southern delegates who thought a popular vote would put them on the losing side of presidential contests; the free population of the North was, of course, larger than the free population of the South. Still other delegates wanted the legislative option to prevail.

In “ Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? ” the historian Alexander Keyssar writes that more than a few other ideas bubbled up over the course of that summer. Among them:

selection by the governors of the states or by state legislatures; election by a committee of 15 legislators chosen by lot (and obliged to act as soon as they were chosen, to avoid intrigue); a popular election in which each voter cast ballots for two or three candidates, only one of whom could be from his own state: nomination of one candidate by the people of each state, with the winner to then be chosen by the national legislature.

As the convention came to a close, the exhausted delegates finally made a choice: Someone else would have to choose. They turned the issue over to a committee on “postponed parts.” That committee, in turn, tried to chart a path of least resistance through the options at hand. First, it adopted an idea — introduced during the summer of discussion — to have electors act as intermediaries between the public and the selection of the president. In a concession to supporters of legislative selection, those electors would gather in a purpose-made body to make their decision. In a nod to the concerns of Southern delegates, the distribution of electors would be based on representation in the House and Senate.

The committee made its recommendation, and with one major modification — the House of Representatives, not the Senate, would decide in the event that no candidate earned a majority — the convention accepted it. The delegates had no real sense of how the Electoral College would work in practice. More than a few thought that most elections would be decided by the House. And in any case, they also knew that however the people chose a president, their first choice would be George Washington. To both the framers and the ratifiers, the mechanism was less important than the man.

In the first presidential elections of the American republic, the Electoral College worked mostly as designed. Some states held popular elections to choose electors; others had them selected by state legislatures. Electors cast their ballots for the man who would be president, Washington, and designated a candidate for vice president as well, John Adams (an effort that required some coordination, since until the ratification of the 12th Amendment, electors could not cast separate ballots for president and vice president). But with the full emergence of partisan politics during Washington’s second term and his departure at its conclusion, state legislatures, essentially acting as partisan political organizations, tried to game the system.

“States,” Keyssar notes, “took advantage of the flexible constitutional architecture to switch procedures from one election to the next.” They would move from legislative selection of electors to a district-based vote to a winner-take-all election (called the general ticket), depending on which option was more likely to secure victory for the legislature’s favored candidate. Virginia, for example, switched from district elections to winner-take-all in 1800 to help Thomas Jefferson win the presidency.

As formal political parties took shape — and center stage — in American politics, more and more state legislatures adopted winner-take-all allocation of electors, in addition to taking steps to ensure that electors would not be independent of the party that chose them. By the time of Jefferson’s battle for re-election in 1804, the framers’ Electoral College — a deliberative body that would filter candidates for selection by the House — was a dead letter. In its place was an effectively new system tailored to partisan reality.

As Keyssar writes:

Candidates for president and vice president were put forward by political parties, centered in Congress; the parties also coordinated the election campaigns. Nearly everywhere the strategic goal of these campaigns was to win legislative or popular majorities within entire states — since all but four (out of 17) delivered their full complement of electoral votes to one candidate. Those votes were physically cast by electors who gathered in state capitals and served simply as messengers: they did not deliberate, discuss or “think.”

The Electoral College as we know it is less a product of the insight or design of the framers and more a contingent adaptation to the political world that emerged out of the first decade of the American republic. That world would change again, in the 1820s and ’30s, with the rise of Andrew Jackson, universal white male suffrage and the mass political party. The electoral system would adjust; by 1837, not willing to lose any partisan advantage, every state (save South Carolina) would adopt winner-take-all allocation of electors by popular vote. The tally of popular votes took on new significance as well: It stood, for the winner, as a symbol of popular legitimacy, even if it didn’t contribute to the outcome of the election.

There is nothing in the Constitution that says Nebraska Republicans can’t change the way the state allocates its electoral voters. At most, if they made the change, Nebraska Republicans would be violating the informal rules of American politics, which strongly discourage this abuse of the process. Again, I think Nebraska Republicans know this, which explains their immediate appeal to the supposed intent of the framers. This is something Americans do. We use the framers — or more accurately, we use the myths and folk traditions we’ve developed around the framers — to legitimize our decisions in the present day and to try to delegitimize those of our opponents.

But whether as men or myths, the framers cannot do this. They cannot justify the choices we make while we navigate our world. The beauty and, perhaps, the curse of self-government is that it is, in fact, self-government. Our choices are our own, and we must defend them on their own terms. And while it is often good and useful to look to the past for guidance, the past cannot answer our questions or tackle our problems.

Novelty may disturb men’s minds, but we are still obligated to take our circumstances on their own terms, not those of an age long settled into dust.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here's our email: [email protected] .

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An earlier version of this article erroneously included a city in the area covered by Nebraska’s Second Congressional District. Lincoln is not part of the district.

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Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington. @ jbouie

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Regions & Countries

8. the changing demographic composition of voters and party coalitions.

Mirroring changes in the U.S. population overall, registered voters have become more educated, more racially and ethnically diverse, older, and more religiously diverse over the past three decades.

Many of these changes have altered the makeup of both parties, but several have had a more pronounced impact on the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.

Race and ethnicity

As the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse, so too has the electorate.

Today, 67% of registered voters are White, 13% are Hispanic, 11% are Black and 4% are Asian. In 1996, when President Bill Clinton was running for reelection, 85% of voters were White, 4% were Hispanic, 9% were Black and about 1% were Asian.

Both parties are more racially and ethnically diverse than three decades ago, but not to the same degree. There has been more change in the composition of the Democratic coalition than the Republican coalition.

• White voters make up 79% of Republicans and Republican leaners. In 1996, they constituted 93% of the party’s voters. Hispanic voters have tripled from 3% to 9% of the GOP over this period. Black and Asian voters are each currently 3% of the party.
• Within the Democratic coalition, the share who are non-Hispanic White has fallen 21 percentage points since 1996 (from 77% to 56%). The share who are Hispanic has about tripled, from 5% then to 16% today. Asian voters have increased from less than 1% of Democrats’ coalition to 6% over the same period. The share of Black voters within the Democratic coalition has remained fairly stable, and they currently make up 18% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters.

Age and the U.S. electorate

The electorate has grown older in recent decades. Currently, about six-in-ten voters are ages 50 and older (29% are 50 to 64 and 29% are 65 and older). By comparison, 41% of voters were 50 and older in 1996.

Reflecting this broader change, both parties’ voters are significantly older now than they were 20 years ago. But today Republican and Republican-leaning voters tend to be older than voters in the Democratic coalition. (In 1996, there was very little difference between the age profiles of the two parties.)

• About two-thirds of voters who align with the Republican Party are 50 and older (32% are 50 to 64 and 33% are 65-plus), compared with slightly more than half of those who associate with the Democratic Party (27% each for ages 50 to 64 and those 65 and older). The share of voters under 30 is twice as large among Democrats (16%) than Republicans (8%). A similar share in each party falls between the ages of 30 and 49 (27% among the Republican Party and 31% among the Democratic Party).

The share of voters with a bachelor’s degree or more has increased significantly among registered voters since 1996, from about a quarter (24%) to four-in-ten today.

Voters with a high school degree or less education have declined roughly in parallel, so that now about three-in-ten have a high school degree or less (28%), compared with nearly half (47%) in 1996. The share of voters with some college experience but no bachelor’s degree has remained relatively stable across this period (32% today, 29% in 1996).

• Among voters who associate with the Democratic Party , the share of voters with a college degree or more has approximately doubled since 1996, from 22% to 45% now. The share of Democratic voters who have no college experience has fallen by about half (from 51% to 25%).
• The Republican coalition has also become more educated, but much more modestly. Today, the GOP’s supporters are divided about equally between those who never went to college (31%), those who attended college but didn’t receive a bachelor’s degree (34%) and those who have a bachelor’s degree or more (35%).

Education by race and ethnicity

The dual trends of increasing education levels and increasing racial and ethnic diversity over the last three decades have resulted in dramatic changes to the electoral landscape.

White voters without a bachelor’s degree remain the largest single group of voters across education levels, race and ethnicity. But where they once represented a clear majority (63%) in 1996, they are now about four-in-ten voters overall (38%).

Overall, about two-in-ten voters are Hispanic (9%), Black (7%) or Asian (2%) and without a bachelor’s degree.

Non-Hispanic White adults with a bachelor’s degree or more represent 28% of voters today, which is up modestly since 1996 (21%). Approximately one-in-ten registered voters are Hispanic (3%), Black (3%) or Asian (3%) and have bachelor’s degrees.

The Republican Party

• White voters without a college degree remain the largest bloc within the Republican coalition, but their share has fallen by 17 percentage points since 1996 (from 68% to 51%).
• 28% of those who associate with the GOP are White voters with a bachelor’s degree, roughly on par with the 25% who were White college graduates in 1996.
• 7% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters are Hispanic without a degree, up from 2% in 1996. Another 3% are Hispanic with a degree (1% in 1996).

The Democratic Party

The Democratic Party does not have a single dominant bloc of voters across education levels, race and ethnicity.

• Three-in-ten voters in the Democratic coalition are White with a bachelor’s degree, up from 18% in 1996.
• About a quarter are White voters without a degree (26%). In 1996, this group made up a majority (59%) of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters.
• Black voters who do not have a bachelor’s degree make up 13% of the Democratic coalition today, nearly identical to the 14% in 1996, while 5% of Democratic voters are Black college graduates (3% in 1996)
• Hispanic voters without a college degree constitute 11% of Democratically aligned voters today (up from 4% in 1996), while Hispanic voters with a degree are 4% of the coalition (1% in 1996).
• 4% of voters who affiliate with or lean to the Democrats are Asian voters with a bachelor’s degree, and 2% are Asian voters without a degree (in 1996, Asian voters overall made up no more than 1% of all Democratic voters).

Religious affiliation

Americans have become less Christian and less religious in recent decades, and the electorate reflects those changes. Two-thirds of voters identify with a Christian denomination, while about a quarter say they are religiously unaffiliated (26%). Fifteen years ago, about eight-in-ten voters were Christians (79%) and 15% were unaffiliated. (We used different questions about religious affiliation prior to 2008, so comparable data only goes back 15 years.)

These broader trends of declining shares of Christians and increasing shares of religious “nones” have impacted the demographic composition of the two parties’ coalitions in diverging ways.

• The Republican coalition remains overwhelmingly Christian. About eight-in-ten Republican and Republican-leaning voters (81%) identify with a Christian religious denomination, which is down modestly from 2008 when 86% identified as Christian.

Among GOP voters, the shares who identify as White evangelical Protestants (30% now, 33% in 2008) and White Catholics (18% now and in 2008) are little changed over the past 15 years. White nonevangelical Protestants have declined as a share of Republican and Republican-leaning voters from 22% to 15% over the same period, while religious “nones” have grown from 9% to 15% of GOP voters.

• About half of voters in the Democratic coalition are Christian (54%), while 38% are religiously unaffiliated and 8% are of non-Christian faiths. As recently as 2008, Christians made up 74% of Democratically oriented registered voters. Over this time period, the share of religiously unaffiliated voters in the coalition has roughly doubled.

Today, White evangelical (5%) and White nonevangelical Protestants (10%) are 15% of the Democratic coalition, down from 28% 15 years ago. The share of Democratically aligned voters who are Black Protestants has changed very little over this period (15% then to 14% now).

Ideological composition of voters

The electorate continues to have more voters who call themselves conservative than call themselves liberal. About a quarter of voters say they are liberal (16%) or very liberal (8%), while 37% say they are conservative (26%) or very conservative (10%).

Almost four-in-ten voters say they are moderate (36%).

These shares are little changed since 2019.

The Republican coalition is overwhelmingly conservative: 49% of Republican-aligned voters say they are conservative and 20% say they are very conservative. About three-in-ten GOP voters say they are moderate (27%), and there are very few liberal identifiers in the party (less than 5%).

The Democratic coalition is more ideologically mixed than the Republican coalition. Among voters who associate with the Democrats, about half say they are very liberal (16%) or liberal (31%), while nearly as many say they are moderate (45%). Around 6% say they are conservative.

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Table of contents, behind biden’s 2020 victory, a voter data resource: detailed demographic tables about verified voters in 2016, 2018, what the 2020 electorate looks like by party, race and ethnicity, age, education and religion, interactive map: the changing racial and ethnic makeup of the u.s. electorate, in changing u.s. electorate, race and education remain stark dividing lines, most popular.

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Biden Nearly Erases Trump’s Lead

April 13, 2024 at 7:26 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“President Biden has nearly erased Donald Trump’s early polling advantage, amid signs that the Democratic base has begun to coalesce behind the president despite lingering doubts about the direction of the country, the economy and his age,” according to a new survey by the New York Times and Siena College .

“Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are now virtually tied, with Mr. Trump holding a 46% to 45% edge. That is an improvement for Mr. Biden from late February, when Mr. Trump had a sturdier 48% to 43% lead just before he became the presumptive Republican nominee.”

“Mr. Biden’s tick upward appears to stem largely from his improved standing among traditional Democratic voters — he is winning a greater share of voters who supported him in 2020 than he did a month ago. Then, Mr. Trump had secured the support of far more of his past voters compared with the president — 97% to 83% — but that margin has narrowed. Mr. Biden is now winning 89% of his 2020 supporters compared with 94% for Mr. Trump.”

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Saturday, April 13

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Admitted students talk role of ChatGPT in essays amid changing admissions policies

Princeton admitted students to the Class of 2028 on Dec. 14 as part of its Single Choice Early Action round.

Louisa gheorghita / the daily princetonian.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is receiving a growing focus at Princeton, serving as the subject of the Class of 2028 Pre-Read and spurring the creation of the Princeton Language and Intelligence Initiative (PLI) in September 2023. ChatGPT’s growing popularity has recently sparked conversation about its place in the classroom and whether it can be accurately detected .

Questions about the role of AI in essay writing and the weight essays should hold in the admissions process remain, during an admissions cycle already upturned by the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action. These concerns have already resulted in Duke University’s decision to abandon the practice of scoring applicant essays.

The newly admitted Class of 2028 is the first Princeton class to have access to this controversial technology during the admissions process. The Daily Princetonian spoke to admits on their perspective on the usage of generative AI during the college application process, and a professor with expertise in the field.

All three incoming members of the Class of 2028 interviewed by the ‘Prince’ said that they had not used any form of AI in their essays, though one student experimented with AI during the essay-writing process.

They expressed that they felt the personal focus of the essay made it an ill-fit for AI assistance. 

“I don’t really know what it would help with because you’re supposed to write about yourself, and it doesn’t know anything about you,” Jacob Emerson ’28 said.

Jamie Creasi ’28 expressed a similar sentiment. “There’s no way for it to communicate the challenges I’ve experienced, or what kind of life I have,” she said.

Hemant Sharma ’28 described his experience with attempting to use AI. He found that his essay “lost its emotional touch” so he ended up reverting to his old essay. “[ChatGPT] just made everything worse,” he said.

The University shares this position. In a written statement to the ‘Prince,’ University Spokesperson Jennifer Morrill wrote, “An essay generated by an AI platform is unlikely to be as rich and nuanced as a student’s own words.”

The ‘Prince’ spoke with Associate Professor of Computer Science Arvind Narayanan about ChatGPT's writing abilities. Professor Narayanan said that while AI may be capable of writing a passable essay, it likely would not be any easier than writing an essay without AI assistance. 

Professor Narayanan said, “If the use of AI assistance causes [the college admissions essay] to matter even less, I see it as an entirely positive development,” finding the essay to be “an exercise in performative authenticity.” 

The new admits differed in opinion about regulating generative AI use in the college admissions process. Creasi likened the usage of ChatGPT to a calculator which helps conduct simple calculations in order to allow a focus on more complex tasks. 

“At first, people saw calculators as a way of cheating because you don’t have to do a lot of the equations that you once did or use your mind in the same sort of way. But since then, we’ve adapted to calculators … we can do higher level math or physics,” he said.

Conversely, Sharma felt that detection of AI usage in a college essay should be allowed, stating, “I think there should be at least a minor punishment because it’s easier if we curb it now so that it doesn’t hurt anyone later in the future.” 

However, even if schools agreed to take action against students suspected of unauthorized AI use, Professor Narayanan believes AI-identification technology is not at the “level of accuracy that would make it justifiable to penalize applicants for using AI assistance.”

Although the University did not respond with explicit rules about the use of generative AI in the college application process, Morrill wrote that all applicants “sign a statement acknowledging all information in the application (including the essays) is their own work.”

Claire Meng is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

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