Where Does One Vote Have the Greatest Impact on The Electoral College?

Courtesy of Tim Spinner - Decatur IL
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So the results are in. If you had to choose a state where your vote would have the greatest impact on the Electoral College where would you go? To determine this I took a look at each individual states, how many votes were cast for President - including all the candidates, major and 3rd parties - and divided that total by the number of Electoral College votes each state received. The fewer votes it takes to get one electoral college vote, the greater the impact the voters of that state have on the Electoral College.

For starters, our own great state of Illinois came in 39th place. That means the votes of 38 states had more impact than ours did. This is to be expected. IL had a senate race which often attracts more voters. If voter turnout is depressed for presidential candidates like it was to an extent this year then states with an average or even higher voter turnout wind up having the individual's vote carry less weight.

Wyoming had the largest impact. With only 248,895 votes cast in that state and receiving 3 electoral votes, the bare minimum, they wound up with each electoral college vote being worth 82,965 real votes. Alaska came in second place with the equivalency of 84,541 votes for each electoral vote in their state and D.C. was in third place with 95,801. No other state got under 100,000 votes per electoral college vote. VT, HI, ND, RI, SD, DE and WV all rounded out the top 10 in that order. 9 out the ten are the smallest states in the Union, WV is 38th in population.

The rest of the list had the large and medium sized states spread out. The worst state for actually having a single vote impact on an electoral college vote was in Florida. Having been a swing state for a number of years and Rubio running for re-election after losing in the presidential primary led to a decent sized turnout in FL. With 9,230,524 votes cast for 29 EC votes it took 323,811 actual votes to equate to one EC vote in FL. After FL came NC with 312,588 and VA with 304,316 - all three swing states.

MN usually is on a streak of having the highest voter turnout which is great for them but lessens the impact of a single vote in the EC. They came in 44th on the list with 2,946,832 votes cast for just 10 EC votes or 294,683 votes per one EC vote.

Other notes of interest. Nevada had 4 times as many votes cast as Wyoming but received only double the number of EC votes. And Rhode Island had almost double the amount of votes cast as were cast in Wyoming but received only one extra EC vote, 4 to WY's 3. Lower voter turnout and lower state population increases the impact of the votes in that state.

What does this mean? Well nothing really. Except it is a real world example using math to show the impact that small states have on the presidential election and how each of the votes in the small states compare to the large states within the Electoral College. In other words, with the EC a voter in Wyoming cast a vote that was worth 3.9 votes in FL or worth 3.04 votes in California or worth 3.24 votes in IL. They are not going to give up that power in the presidential election by abolishing the EC.