Title
Swing States, the Winner-Take-all Electoral College, and Fiscal Federalism
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-1-2017
Publication Title
Atlantic Economic Journal
Volume
45
First Page
45
Last Page
57
Keywords
Electoral College, Fiscal federalism, Intergovernmental grants, Swing voters
Abstract
© 2017, International Atlantic Economic Society. The impact of the Electoral College on U.S. presidential elections is often criticized by academics and political commentators. One facet of its impact, the winner-take-all allocation of states’ Electoral College votes, serves in practice to overweight some votes in some states relative to other votes in other states. These disparities in the relative impact of votes in a presidential election can be large. Here, a metric is introduced to quantify the magnitude of these disparities in each presidential election. Using that metric, we show that states whose votes were overweighted in a presidential election subsequently received higher levels of federal grant spending under the newly-elected (re-elected) administration.
Recommended Citation
Duquette, Christopher M.; Mixon, Franklin G.; and Cebula, Richard J., "Swing States, the Winner-Take-all Electoral College, and Fiscal Federalism" (2017). Faculty Bibliography. 2946.
https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/bibliography_faculty/2946
