What if it ties?

Below is a map indicating which party has a majority in which state's House delgation, based upon the 2002 House elections. I'll check the Constitution later to see if Senators should be included too and whether the 2004 House will make the decision or the 2002 House. But, preliminarily, what it indicates is that, in the event of an electoral college tie, Bush would crush Kerry in the House.


Red states are predominately Republican, Blue states Democrat, and Green states are equally divided between the two parties. If states were to vote on a strictly party-line basis, then Kerry would get a minimum of 15 states, 18 if you include the evens, and 19 if DC gets a vote (again, I'll check later).

However, more interesting is the evident lack of an overlap between any given state's Congressional delegation and the likely party its voters will support in the Presidential election. For example, if Arkansas and Tennessee were to go to Bush but their delegates were to vote for Kerry, what would happen? Would Congressional delegations feel any compulsion to vote for the candidate favored by their state rather than the one favored by the party?

The map below shows which states would be inordinately likely to face exactly such a dilemma - a Congressional delegation of one party representing a state that had tried to vote for the opposite party. In this map, "yellow" indicates no likely conflict, "blue" indicates a potential "Blue state" with a Republican delegation, and "red" indicates a potential "Red State" with a Democratic delegation. ("green" still represents a split delegation).


As you can see, there are as many as 12 states which might likely test the loyalty of their Republican congregations by endorsing Kerry (though some such as Missouri are greater stretches than others) and 6 states which might end up endorsing Bush against the party affiliation of their Representatives.

I'd imagine this situation could prove to be a true mess were the election to end in a tie. Later this evening, I'll try and come up with actual potential tie scenarios and nail down the exact Constitutional provisions for an electoral tie.