The Electoral College can magnify a win finto a landslide President-elect's share of electoral and popular votes
That two such dissimilar elections could generate such similar Electoral College margins illustrates an abiding feature of the United States’ quirky way of choosing its top executive: The Electoral College consistently produces more lopsided results than the popular vote.
Looking back at every presidential election since 1828 (when they began to resemble today’s system), the winner’s electoral vote share has, on average, been 1.36 times his popular vote share – what we call the electoral vote inflation (EVI) factor.
The bigger the EVI, the greater the disparity between the winner’s popular vote and electoral vote margins; the smaller the EVI, the closer the two margins are to each other. Based on the reported popular vote to date and the expected vote in the Electoral College, Biden’s EVI is 1.11 – smaller, in fact, than Trump’s in 2016 (1.23), and the smallest since George W. Bush’s two victories in 2000 and 2004 (1.05 both times).
The Electoral College can magnify a win finto a landslide  | President-elect's share of electoral and popular votes  | 100%  | ELECTORAL VOTES  | 75  | 56.9  | 50  | 51.3  | POPULAR VOTE  | 25  | 1828 1840  | 1860  | 1880  | 1900  | 1920  | 1940  | 1960  | 1980  | 2000  | '00  | Sources: National Archives (1828 2016 electoral vote data); Dave Leif's Atlas of U.S Presidential Elections and U.S House  | Clerk's office (1828 2012 popular vote data); Pew Research Center tabulations of official state election results (2016 and  | 2020); The Washington Post (2020 electoral vote totals and supplemental popular-vote data); Pew Research Center analysis.  | PEW RESEARCH CENTER 