How The American Electoral College Would Look If It Was Used In Europe

Map created by reddit user xMusa24The map above shows the slight absurdities of the American Electoral College system. It redistributes the 538 electoral college votes used in the US system to the 50 countries in Europe seen above.

Under it, each state has at least 3 electoral college votes representing 1 congressperson, and 2 Senators.

The Electoral College is then tasked with electing the president every 4 years.

In our European example above the Vatican each vote would represent just 255 people whereas in Russia each vote would represent over 2 million people!

Micro states like Monaco, San Marino, Andorra and Liechtenstein would also get 3 each the same as somewhere like Iceland with as much as 10X the population.

So here’s how the numbers work out for Europe as a whole (and someone has also done the work for if only the EU was included).

xMusa24 explains that:

Every country has at least 3 electoral votes.

On average 1 electoral vote represents about 999,640 people.

1 electoral vote of Vatican City represents about 255 people, while 1 Russian electoral vote represents about 2,086,919 people.

Source populations = The United Nations estimates, published in the UN’s World Population Prospects. https://population.un.org/wpp/

Here are the the countries ranked from most to least electoral college votes:

Country Name	Population	Total EC Votes	People Per EC Vote
Russia	143,997,393	69	2,086,919
Turkey	87,685,426	43	2,039,196
Germany	84,075,074	41	2,050,612
United Kingdom	69,551,332	35	1,987,181
France	66,650,804	33	2,019,721
Italy	59,146,260	30	1,971,542
Spain	47,889,958	25	1,915,598
Ukraine	38,980,376	21	1,856,208
Poland	38,140,910	20	1,907,046
Romania	18,908,650	12	1,575,721
Netherlands	18,346,819	11	1,667,893
Belgium	11,758,603	8	1,469,825
Sweden	10,656,633	8	1,332,079
Czech Republic	10,609,240	8	1,326,155
Portugal	10,411,834	8	1,301,479
Azerbaijan	10,397,713	8	1,299,714
Greece	9,938,844	8	1,242,356
Hungary	9,632,287	7	1,376,041
Austria	9,113,574	7	1,301,939
Belarus	8,997,603	7	1,285,372
Switzerland	8,967,408	7	1,281,058
Bulgaria	6,714,560	6	1,119,093
Serbia	6,689,039	6	1,114,840
Denmark	6,002,507	6	1,000,418
Finland	5,623,330	6	937,222
Norway	5,623,071	6	937,179
Slovakia	5,474,881	6	912,480
Ireland	5,308,039	5	1,061,608
Croatia	3,848,160	5	769,632
Georgia	3,806,671	5	761,334
Bosnia and Herzegovina	3,140,096	4	785,024
Moldova	2,996,106	4	749,027
Armenia	2,952,364	4	738,091
Lithuania	2,830,144	4	707,536
Albania	2,771,508	4	692,877
Slovenia	2,117,072	4	529,268
Latvia	1,853,559	4	463,390
North Macedonia	1,813,791	4	453,448
Kosovo	1,674,125	4	418,531
Cyprus	1,370,754	4	342,689
Estonia	1,344,232	4	336,058
Luxembourg	680,454	3	226,818
Montenegro	632,729	3	210,910
Malta	545,405	3	181,802
Iceland	398,266	3	132,755
Andorra	81,938	3	27,313
Liechtenstein	39,870	3	13,290
Monaco	38,631	3	12,877
San Marino	33,581	3	11,194
Vatican	764	3	255

In the US California has the worst relative representation at 1 EC vote per 1.3 million people, whereas Wyoming get 1 EC vote per 196,000 people.

Reddit user miclugo did the work for just the EU:

Here’s what I get, based on the populations at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apportionment_in_the_European_Parliament and 435 seats.

Population is 448,387,872, or 1,030,776 per seat, so I just divide the country’s population by that constant, and then add 2 EV corresponding to the “Senate”.

– Germany: 84
– France: 68
– Italy: 59
– Spain: 49
– Poland: 38
– Romania: 20
– Netherlands: 18
– Belgium, Czechia: 13
– Sweden, Portugal, Greece: 12
– Hungary, Austria: 11
– Bulgaria, Denmark: 8
– Finland, Slovakia, Ireland: 7
– Croatia: 6
– Lithuania: 5
– Slovenia, Latvia: 4
– Estonia, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta: 3

Total EV is 435 + 2*27 = 489.

By the way Malta (the least populous EU member) has 542,051 people. This is less than Wyoming but not by much.