Let’s send 500k White, Cis, Straight-Passing, Democratic NYCers to Live in Swing States

In the wake of the election disaster, lots of people (like Will Oremus of Slate) are admonishing liberals (especially us hyper-privileged white cisgendered hetero-passing folks) to make the ultimate sacrifice: move from your cozy little bubble havens to the gritty trenches of a blood-red swing state. And that’s how you’ll restore order and sanity to our world.

But there’s a couple of caveats that are worth considering. Well, a lot of caveats, actually, but here’s some mathematical ones worth considering.

1. If it’s just you and your partner, or even you and a couple friends, that’s not going to make a lot of difference. Thus, we really need an exodus of people on a monumental scale.
2. But exactly how many people do we need? Well, how many can we spare? Let’s say for the sake of argument that we have 500k people who work 90% to 100% remotely and currently live in NYC. (I mean, let’s be real. NYC is way overcrowded. Almost 8.5 million people and steadily rising, amirite?) Let’s say that all of them agree, for one reason or another, to be distributed strategically throughout the country to build happy little New New York Cities. (I imagine some corporations would be excited to provide “target location relocation” bonuses under the pretense of “expanding market reach” or something.)
3. So let’s assume we’ve got 500k people willing and ready and able to leave the greatest city on earth, waiting to know where their company (or progressive socialist leader) wants them. Where exactly where should these people go, strategically speaking? The leader of these huddled masses probably wants to ensure that they’re getting the best ‘bang for your buck’ per vote.

Here’s some math on the matter. My first question is… how much ‘bang for our buck’ did we get this election?

How Many Electoral Votes was Your Vote Worth This Election?

So take a look at this chart above. Using some handy-dandy formulas and some basic stats, I was able to calculate the percent that each vote counted in terms of the overall electoral college. I did this by dividing the # of electoral votes by the number of total votes cast in each state, and then converting that number to a percentage. These percentages are a little awkward to read, but let me break it down for you.

The best ‘bang for our buck’ in terms of electoral power is going to come from the states highlighted in yellow: Alaska (where your vote is worth 1.35/100,000 %EV),Wyoming (where your vote is worth 1.30/100,000 %EV), Utah (where your vote is worth 1.04/100,000 %EV), North Dakota (where your vote is worth 0.97/100,000 %EV), and South Dakota (where your vote is worth 0.87/100,000 %EV),.

Washington DC, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Hawaii all have highly powerful EV ratios as well, but obviously those aren’t key battlegrounds for progressive candidates.

This is a great start in terms of understanding how one’s personal choices can impact an election on a hyper-micro level. So let’s say you just want to make the best possible change for just you, yourself, and you , in terms of making your votes count as much as possible — this is the information you need.

Now let’s put this into context.

This chart doesn’t include all 50 states, but instead all the states that Trump won or nearly won. In green we see the states where Clinton won, or nearly won, within a very small percentage of less than 1% of the popular vote. So we might consider these to be easily jeopardized states. The yellow rows are High Priority for this theoretical exodus given the dual factors of high EV* power per actual vote, and/or a very low number of people necessary to enact a color flip from red to blue state.

The orange rows are also important, but secondary in priority given the middle-level of EV* power of each vote. The rose rows are tertiary in priority, for the same reason, with different thresholds. And then the grey rows are not only basically impossible feats to achieve, requiring upwards of 300k people per state because the EV* power of each vote is so low.

The D+ Column is perhaps the most interesting item on this chart, if I do say so myself. The D+ value equals the number of Democratic votes needed to bring each state’s popular vote total to a comfortable ~2.0% win for the Democrats.

Notice that in Alaska, if we’d just had 43k additional Democratic votes for Clinton, then Clinton would have won that state with a comfortable 2% margin. The reason that I’ve colored that line yellow is because the impact that each individual vote has is tremendous, as I explained in the previous chart, particularly combined with the number of needed votes being so small. That’s less than the total capacity of Yankee Stadium.

Other margins were similarly thin. Wisconsin could have been won by Clinton had just an additional number of votes equal to half the population of Madison, WI. In Pennsylvania, Clinton could have won if there’d been an additional number of votes equal to half the population of South Philly.

Basically, this chart shows us that if we’d had 100,000 extra Democratic votes for each state — Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — Clinton would have come much closer to winning the presidential race.

So let’s make an effort. If just under 300k committed progressive voters leave New York City and take a stand by planting themselves in MI, WI, and PA, then our nation’s map can start to turn blue again, and the Dems will net 46 electoral votes. For bonus points, if send another 125k people or so to Arizona, that gets us a total of 57 electoral votes. And if we send the remainder of our 500k person budget to Alaska… well, Sarah Palin will see her state’s landscape change color right from her house.

Maybe. Of course there’s a lot of fallacy assumptions in this hypothesis. This is assuming this turnout for Trump in 2016 was part of a larger trend that will indeed assert itself with the same strength in future elections. This is assuming that Trump’s victory won’t galvanize many of the more sluggish Democratic citizens of this nation. This is assuming that Republicans don’t band together and try and do the same thing that I’m proposing Democrats do. This is assuming we even have future elections (since that’s a question in many peoples’ minds given Trump’s fascist streak.)

But I’m writing this with the goal of trying to show us all that yes, we do have power to influence the course of our country. I think our Electoral College has failed us too many times in the past 20 years. I have lost faith in a huge swath of the country. But we do have the power to make some changes — I think it’s possible to accomplish this, if we make a concerted effort, and really try to get our act together as activists.

I think the only way to make our Electoral College great again (*hah!*) is to mix up our country. Do some real house-cleaning. Rub down our nation’s forgotten dark corners with a brave couple of clean, soaped-up washcloths that are ready for the heavy-duty job. Trump-ites want to ‘shake up Washington?’ How about we shake up everywhere else, then? Too much of our country has gone stale. No. Worse than stale. Fetid.

Given that Republicans have a lot of trouble imagining other perspectives than their own, sort-of by default, I think us white cisgendered hetero-passing progressive folks should make an effort to put ourselves into situations that are uncomfortable. We’ve let ourselves be lulled into a false sense of security, underestimated the virulence and racism that pervade the wide empty parts of our country, and let ourselves be distracted by the prominence of city affairs in our media.

Feel free to critique this article, any of my math, any of my suggestions, any of my thoughts. I’m not a mathematician, I’m just a scared person with a social science degree who desperately wants to prevent nuclear war or some shit.

I’m not wedded to any particular plot or gameplan, merely trying to come up with something cohesive that might potentially work, based on the meager data we’ve got available at this moment.

One additional thought. If only 1/2 of the people I’m proposing leave NYC (let’s say our budget is drastically cut in half, as budgets are prone to do) but each one of our New New Yorkers finds one democratic voter who didn’t vote in 2016 and drags them to the polls for the rest of eternity, then we’d achieve the same effect. Right?