The 2024 presidential election is likely to again be a close race decided by just a handful of states and the Electoral College.
The United States Constitution requires that a candidate must receive a majority of the electoral votes to win the election. Currently, there are 538 electoral votes, meaning a candidate must receive at least 270 votes to become president.
If there is a tie in the electoral votes, there is a risk of a 269-269 Electoral College tie, and the risk is even greater if the race is close.
Four years ago, the US saw a near tie situation. This would have happened if Donald Trump had won Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan or Georgia. Or, if Trump had won Pennsylvania, Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, Michigan or Georgia, the electoral college votes would have been deadlocked.
surely, Less than 43,000 votes The gap between Trump and Joe Biden narrowed in Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona.
of The 2024 election is likely These are the “Blue Wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and the Sun Belt battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina. Polls have shown that these are the closest battleground states, and that both campaigns are devoting the most, and almost exclusively, of their resources to these seven states.
election Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District is also at stake.along with the state of Maine. Allocating electoral votes using the district systemIt's not winner-take-all voting, and Joe Biden won the 2nd District in 2020, but it's currently represented by Republican Don Bacon. The Cook Partisan Voter Index rates it as “even.”.
If the results of the 2020 electoral map remain unchanged, the election will be a tie if Kamala Harris wins the Blue Wall states and Donald Trump wins the Sun Belt battleground states and Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District.
Another tie scenario would be if Trump wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, and Harris wins Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, an outcome that is much more likely than not given how close the 2024 election is expected to be.
In the event of a tie in November, real people who serve as presidential electors will meet in each state capitol on December 17 to convert the popular vote into electoral votes. Most states have laws binding their electors to the winner of their state's popular vote, but many do not, making them easy targets for aggressive lobbying in the weeks after the election.
In the event of a tie, even one faithless elector could sway the outcome of the election.
Despite the 2020 Supreme Court ruling, Chiafalo v. Washington States can ban faithless electors, but 13 states that make up the 106 electoral votes have no laws banning faithless voting, including the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Moreover, 15 states have banned faithless voting but have not provided a means for such votes to be reversed, which would almost certainly be challenged when Congress certifies the electoral votes on January 6, 2025.
If the electoral votes remain tied, it will be up to the newly elected 119th Congress to decide the winner of the election, with the House of Representatives choosing the president and the Senate choosing the vice president.
In the Senate, each senator has one vote and voting continues until one candidate receives a majority. If the Democrats maintain control of the Senate after the election, Tim Walz will be the sure choice for Vice President. If the Republicans gain control, J.D. Vance will be the sure choice.
The Constitution is silent on whether Vice President Kamala Harris could cast a tie-breaking vote in such a unique situation if the Senate becomes deadlocked.
The House of Representatives has an entirely different procedure: Instead of each member voting individually, each state's House delegation must decide how its state will vote.
Republicans currently hold control of the U.S. House of Representatives by a 28-22 margin. Unless Democrats significantly gain control of the House of Representatives in the elections, the House will likely elect Donald Trump as president.
For critics of the Electoral College system, this contingency procedure exposes significant problems. First, it gives great power to states regardless of population. In the House of Representatives, the votes of California, a state with a population of over 40 million, are equal to the votes of Wyoming, a state with a population of less than 600,000.
The contingency procedures also make it clear that Americans could end up with a president from one party and a vice president from the other. If Republicans control enough of the House delegation and Democrats hold the Senate, a Trump-Waltz administration is likely.
The last time two presidential candidates from different parties served in the same administration was in 1800, when Federalist President John Adams and Democratic-Republican Vice President Thomas Jefferson served together for four extremely tumultuous years.
The 2020 election and the storming of the Capitol on January 6th demonstrated that campaigns may go to great lengths to test the limits of the Constitution and those charged with enforcing it. A tie in the Electoral College votes is unlikely, but given the current state of the race, it is possible.
The resulting misconduct would lead to a further constitutional crisis that would test the American Republic in unprecedented and potentially dangerous ways.
Robert AlexanderHe is a PhD professor of political science at Bowling Green State University and author of Representation and the Electoral College, published by Oxford University Press. David B. CohenHe holds a PhD and is a professor of political science and director of the Applied Political Science Program at the University of Akron.
