Wisconsin Was the Electoral College Tipping-Point State, Again

The Electoral College formally convened in the 50 states and the District of Columbia on Monday and elected Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States by a vote of 306 to 232.

Biden beat President Trump by 4.3 percentage points in the national popular vote, but if you want to understand how close the election really was, you need to look at the states that put him over the top in the Electoral College: Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia.

Biden carried each state by a fraction of one percentage point: 0.63 points in Wisconsin, 0.3 points in Arizona, and 0.24 points in Georgia. If Biden had lost all three states, the result would have been a 269-269 Electoral College tie. This would have thrown the presidential election to the House of Representatives where each state delegation would get one vote. And House Republicans will hold a majority in the delegations of a majority of the states, so tossing the election to the House would have resulted in Trump’s re-election.