FiveThirtyEight. DataLab. New York this week became the 10th state (plus D.C.) to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The compact represents a clever workaround to the Electoral College. By signing on, states agree they will award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote (for example, New York would have given its electoral votes to George W.
Bush in 2004). However, the measure will only be triggered once states accounting for a majority of electoral votes have joined. There are 538 electoral votes (hence the name of this website), so a majority is 270. The compact’s signatories, so far, total 165 electoral votes. That represents a lot of progress since Maryland, with its 10 electoral votes, became the first state to join the compact in 2007. Here’s the problem: All the states to have joined so far are very blue. As the chart below indicates, the relationship between whether a state has joined the compact and how it voted in 2012 is nearly 1-to-1. Guardian Data Store.