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Florida ranks among the top 10 states in terms of having the most powerful voters when it comes to presidential elections, but not so high when it comes to senatorial elections.
This according to an in-depth analysis by the personal-finance website WalletHub, titled 2016’s States with the Most or Least Powerful Voters.
Florida, according to the analysis, ranks 10th among the 50 states for having the most powerful votes in presidential elections and 15th out of 34 when it comes to influencing Senate elections.
Topping the list in the presidential category was Arizona, followed by Iowa, Alaska, South Dakota, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Georgia at number nine.
Interestingly, California was in 51st place in presidential elections with a vote power of 0.37, while Arizona, at the top, scored a vote power of 207.05 and Florida, 105.82.
Topping the list in the Senate category was New Hampshire, followed by Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Alaska, North Dakota, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
New Hampshire, at the top in Senate elections, had a vote power of 83.58, while Florida had a vote power of 3.18, and California’s, again at the very bottom, was zero.
“Not all votes are created equal,” WalletHub author Ritchie Bernardo writes in the introduction to the analysis. “Some votes carry more weight than others simply because of the somewhat complicated way that our voting system is organized. Members of Congress are elected by direct popular vote. But the president is chosen by the Electoral College, a group selected by voters when they cast a ballot for commander-in-chief.”
Bernardo goes on to explain that although in theory all votes are counted equally, and notwithstanding the one person/one vote principle, the choices of swing-state citizens are actually more influential in determining the outcome.
“It’s safe to assume that Alabama will vote Republican and California will vote Democratic in the upcoming election,” Bernardo writes. “But the electoral results of swing states are up in the air, giving their voters more impact.”
The same principle, Bernardo writes, applies to voter power in Senate elections, given that voters in swing states will ultimately determine which political party controls the Senate.
To reach their conclusions, WalletHub analysts reportedly utilized the following methodology:
For the presidential election, the analysts graded each state on a 100-point scale, with 100 points assigned to those states that showed a 50-percent chance of swinging either red or blue. And with zero points assigned to states with no chance of one party determining the election.
The analysts next multiplied the win probability score by the number of electors of a given state and divided the product by the state’s population ages 18 and older. Next, the analysts multiplied the result by 1,000,000 in order to calculate the presidential election voter power score.
The same method was applied to the Senate elector voter power score for each state, except in this case, the analysts multiplied the win probability score by the number of Senate seats up for election (hence the 34) for each state, instead of by its number of electors.
Visit https://wallethub.com/edu/how-much-is-your-vote-worth/7932/ for a full description of the analysis and the experts’ discussion of such questions as whether it’s fair that every state gets two senators regardless of population; how having so many gerrymandered, uncompetitive House districts impact governance; and whether the Electoral College system should be reformed?