It's no surprise that the Electoral College distorts the popular vote. This can be seen in any presidential election where the electoral votes are disproportionately allocated to one candidate or another. Additionally, the amount of voters does not directly correspond with the electoral votes a state gives to a candidate.

The expectation is that the Electoral College will inflate the popular vote winner’s margin, but it might not. We decided to look at the 2008 election for a “worst case scenario” of just how few popular votes Barack Obama really needed to earn a majority of the vote in the Electoral College.  We didn’t touch John McCain’s votes, but eliminated all the “unnecessary” votes earned by Obama – meaning all of his votes in states he didn’t’ need to win and any “surplus” votes earned in states he wins (meaning any votes beyond one more than McCain).

The findings are striking:

·         President Obama could have defeated Sen. John McCain in the Electoral College with as few as 24,781,169 popular votes despite McCain earning 59,479,469 votes. In other words, he could have won even while losing the popular vote by 69% to 29% (with 2% for other).

·         Looking only at states that he actually won, Obama could have carried enough states to earn 270 electoral votes with just 26,721,494 votes – meaning with a popular vote defeat by 68% to 30%.

Here’s more on how we did the analysis. First, we focused on states that have low ratios of electoral votes to popular votes, allowing us to measure the inequality of popular votes between states.

Take California and Wyoming. California has 55 electoral votes, and Wyoming has 3. In the 2008 election, there were 13,561,900 voters in California and 254,658 voters in Wyoming. If we divide the total number of voters per electoral votes, California ends up with 246,580 voters per electoral vote, and Wyoming has 84,886 voters per electoral vote. In this case, it is very clear to see that the vote cast in Wyoming can make more of a difference in determining where electoral votes go. Additionally, it shows how votes in one state matter more than votes in other states; not all votes are equal.

It’s not just population size, of course. Turnout matters too, as low turnout has no affect on a state’s number of electoral votes. So you need relatively few popular votes to win a low turnout state.

In addition, due to the nature of a winner-take-all system, the candidate who receives at least one more vote than their opponent will win the state and all of its electoral votes. For example, in Washington DC, Obama won with 92% of the vote (with 245,800 votes), while McCain only received 6.5% of the vote (with 17,367 votes). Winning by 92% is essentially overkill when it comes to winning electoral votes. Obama could have won DC's 3 electoral votes with only one more vote than McCain (17,368). It isn't really necessary for Obama to gain those other 228,433 votes because gaining a plurality is all that matters in the current Electoral College set-up.

By extending this example across the United States, we can see theoretically how few popular votes Obama can receive in order to win each individual state. States are in order of number of voters per electoral vote. (Note that being high up on this list does not mean that state is getting anything particular out of the Electoral College. Nearly all of these states are ignored by presidential candidates because they aren’t considered “swing” states.)

In this hypothetical case, Obama becomes president with 270 electoral votes, but only 24,781,169 popular votes. Taking into account the total number of votes casted in 2008, the theoretical minimum number of votes Obama received is 19%.

In order to make this scenario somewhat more plausible, we can apply this McCain's count +1 to states Obama won in the 2008 election.

* Maine divides its electoral votes depending on congressional district. In these scenarios, Obama wins all of the electoral votes.

** Nebraska also divides its electoral votes depending on congressional district. The first scenario gives Obama 1 electoral votes, but in the second scenario none of Nebraska’s votes are in play.

Here we see Obama winning with 270 electoral votes, but with only 26,721,494 popular votes, which is only 21% of the popular vote.

Therefore, it is possible to receive an incredibly small amount of the popular vote, but still win the presidential election. This has enormous consequences for the legitimacy of our democracy.

Source: http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2008/2008presgeresults.pdf