What’s the Magic Number for Winning the Presidency in 2024?
For Democrats it’s 270 Electoral Votes. For Republicans it’s 269.
FACT: Under our present Electoral College system, the winning Presidential candidate needs an absolute majority of 270 electoral votes.
FACT: If no candidate achieves this threshold, the election of the President gets thrown to the United States House of Representatives, per the Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment.
In such a “contingent election,” each state delegation in the House receives one vote. Of the 50 state delegations presently comprising the House of Representatives, the Republican Party has a majority in 26 of them – the bare minimum majority needed in a contingent election. The map below (compiled by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics) displays the current makeup of the 50 delegations in the U.S. House of Representatives:
The Republican Party is in the majority in 26 of the 50 state delegations in the U.S. House of Representatives. Map courtesy of the UVA Center for Politics; used by permission.
Therefore, should the Electoral College fail to produce a majority winner, the Republican candidate for President wins the election in 2024.
One additional detail: The map above shows the makeup of the House delegations going into the 2024 election. But it’s the newly elected House members (those elected in the 2024 election) who would participate in the contingent vote. Thanks to heavily gerrymandered House districts, it’s unlikely that there will be much change in party control of the state delegations, according to the Center for Politics analysis.
How did things go the last time the U.S. House of Representatives decided a Presidential election? No one on the planet is alive who witnessed this event because it happened two centuries ago following the mangled election of 1824. Here’s a brief recap of that election, an election that marked the first time in American history that the Electoral College winner failed to amass the most popular votes.
During the first two decades of the 19th Century in the American republic, the Federalist Party was dissolving, and by the 1810s it had fallen apart. The Democratic-Republican Party was the hot new ticket and – heading into the election of 1824 – was beginning to break down into factions. The party produced four candidates vying for President:
Andrew Jackson – The Tennessee Senator would later join the future Democratic Party.
John Quincy Adams – The Secretary of State (from Massachusetts), son of former President John Adams, would later join the future Republican Party.
William H. Crawford – The Secretary of the Treasury (from Georgia) sadly suffered a stroke just prior to the election.
Henry Clay – The influential Speaker of the House (from Kentucky) would later join the future Republican Party.
Here were the results:
Data courtesy 270 to Win, https://www.270towin.com/1824_Election/
Because the four-way race produced no majority winner in the Electoral College, the Twelfth Amendment was invoked. Henry Clay’s tally was dismissed since he was not one of the top-three electoral vote recipients; the Speaker of the House threw his considerable support behind John Quincy Adams. Clay wielded such an amount of influence that his own Kentucky delegation – who had been directed to vote for Andrew Jackson – ended up backing John Quincy Adams. That was enough to throw the election to Adams, and on February 9, 1825, this was the tally in the House of Representatives:
Adams 13 state delegations
Jackson 7 state delegations
Crawford 4 state delegations
The U.S. at the time had 24 states, and an absolute majority was needed to win the House contingency vote. Thus, John Quincy Adams was elected to the Presidency despite having 45,000 fewer votes than the popular vote winner, Andrew Jackson.
As a reward, President John Quincy Adams appointed his stalwart and influential supporter Henry Clay to Secretary of State. Convinced that the election had been stolen from him, Andrew Jackson thundered:
“Was there ever witnessed such a bare faced corruption in any country before?”
He would later avenge his defeat by decisively winning the 1828 Presidential contest.
Applying the Twelfth Amendment’s rules to the U.S. in 2024, should the Electoral College fail to produce a candidate who meets (or exceeds) the 270 magic number threshold, each of the 50 state delegations comprising the U.S. House of Representatives votes for the (top three) candidates. An absolute majority of 26 votes determines the outcome of the Presidential election. The Republican Party maintains a majority in 26 of the 50 delegations. Therefore, the Republican Party’s threshold for winning the Presidency in 2024 is 269 electoral votes.
Such a “contingent election” has (so far) only happened twice in the American republic’s history – the Presidential elections of 1800 and 1824. Historical accounts of the aftermath of the 1824 election only begin to hint at the levels of acrimony, contempt and betrayal exhibited by the candidates and their supporters. Imagine how such feelings would unfold should history repeat itself in 2024.
(Remember, we came nail-bitingly close to having an Electoral College tie in 2020. Had only three key swing states gone the other way in the winner-take-all system, the Electoral College would have deadlocked 269-269. Had Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District also voted differently, we would have had another minority President.)
Here are the key takeaways:
In the upcoming 2024 Presidential election, the Republican Party will likely need only 269 electoral votes to secure the presidency, while the Democratic Party will need 270.
If the magic number of 270 is not reached in the Electoral College (because of a deadlocked close election or a robust third candidate), electoral chaos is likely to unfold. See Election of 1824.
Not achieving the 270 electoral threshold punts the Presidential election to the House of Representatives. Electoral chaos is likely to unfold. See Election of 1824.
One final factoid from 1824: Historians note that Andrew Jackson’s electoral vote count was inflated thanks to the three fifths compromise, which added in the slave populations of the southern states, even though slaves themselves were barred from voting.
Next year marks the bicentennial anniversary of the last time a contingent election took place in the U.S. House of Representatives. If history repeats itself, we can assuredly blame the Electoral College – and the related Twelfth Amendment. As UVA’s Center for Politics states, the Electoral College is “an ancient foundation upon which we have constructed our modern representative democracy.”
Ready for 2024?
Just one more critical reason to support the National Popular Vote, until action is taken on actually abolishing the EC (it's gonna be a while, face it!). NPV ensures that the candidate winning the most votes wins the election, and only becomes effective when signatory states add up to 270. We're at 195 now, with a potential of 25 votes this legislative session (Michigan and Minn), and several more states next year, including Maine.