2000 Election Again (or How Big is Your House?)

The law that set the size of the US House of Representatives at 435 was passed in 1941. There is nothing magical about the number 435. If you asked Congresscritters in 1941 what they thought the size of the House might be in 2001, perhaps many would have thought that it would have been larger.

Since Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election, anyone giving a bit of thought to the makeup of the electoral college would realize that a larger House of Representatives would have resulted in a Gore electoral victory. But how large would such a House need to be?

You can find the answer at this link at thirty-thousand.org.

The answer is 492.

Hold on, this is where it gets interesting. House sizes of 491 and 597 result in an electoral tie. But for sizes between these two numbers, the result flip-flops (to use a term from the 2004 election) several times between favouring Bush and Gore, with a few electoral ties as well.

Gore wins with a House size greater than 597. Except for 655, which would have resulted in a tie.

According to the thirty-thousand.org site mentioned above,

The winner of the 2000 presidential election was determined in 1941 when the House size was fixed at 435. Had the House size been set at 500 in 1941 (and not been changed since) then Gore would have won the 2000 election!