Wyoming Rule

As indicated in the table below, the Wyoming rule typically only carries a modest notional impact on historical presidential elections. In only two cases since 1932, these being 1960 and 1976, would the Wyoming rule have potentially caused a candidate to gain or lose more than a full percentage point in terms of electoral vote share. Both of these elections were special cases - 1960 due to the presence of unpledged electors in the South and 1976 due to the potential effect the Wyoming rule could have had in the notional Congressional districts of Maine.

The one presidential election for which the Wyoming Rule might have significantly impacted the result was the tightly-contested 2000 United States presidential election, assuming the disputed state of Florida had still been carried by George W. Bush. In this case, had Bush and Al Gore received all of the electoral votes in the states they won and had there been no faithless electors, they would have finished tied in the Electoral College with 324 electoral votes each, possibly forcing contingent elections in the United States Congress. However, it must be noted that both Maine and Nebraska at the time would have had one additional electoral vote each under the Wyoming rule, and thus both states would have had radically different Congressional district boundaries. In Nebraska, this would not likely have been a factor since Bush carried every county in the state, thus making it extremely unlikely an additional electoral vote there could have been won by Al Gore. However, in Maine, Bush carried 5 of the 16 counties including heavily populated Penobscot County as well as Piscataquis, Washington, Lincoln and Waldo counties. All of those counties are contiguous with one another. Bordering the counties Bush won are Hancock, Knox and Aroostook counties, all of which Bush lost by small margins. Had those eight counties comprised a congressional district in 2000, it would have been carried by Bush by 4,767 votes. Of course, there are countless ways Congressional districts can be legally drawn in a state including innumerable ways in which all three notional Maine districts would have been won by Gore. Moreover, district boundaries often do not follow county lines.

Following the actual 2000 elections, the Republicans controlled 27 state House delegations, the Democrats controlled 18, one was controlled by an independent who caucused with the Democrats and the remaining four were split. The Republicans therefore controlled one more state House delegation than needed to elect the President on a party-line vote in a contingent election under the Twelfth Amendment. However, four of those Republican delegations were single Representatives from states (Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and South Dakota) that at the time would have elected two Representatives under the Wyoming Rule. Had only two of those House delegations split as a result, and the Republicans not gained control of any other delegations, the Republicans would have lacked control of enough state House delegations to elect Bush on a party-line vote. A much more radical shift would have been required to produce a House that could elect Gore on a party-line vote.

In any hypothetical contingency election, a House without one party controlling a minimum of 26 state delegations cannot elect a President under a strict party-line vote. In this situation, at least some Representatives would need to break ranks with their party for the House to elect a President. Under this sort of circumstance, since Gore won the popular vote in 2000 it is likely that Congressional delegations would have been under considerable pressure to respect the result of the popular vote in any contingency election, especially if the process became deadlocked.

Had the electoral vote for Vice President ended tied, the United States Senate would have elected the new Vice President. A party-line vote in that chamber would have resulted in a tie between Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney. The Constitution is not clear as to whether the Vice President can vote to break a tie in that situation, meaning that Gore as Vice President would have potentially but not certainly had the opportunity to cast the deciding vote and elect his running mate Lieberman. Such a move (if permitted) would not only have allowed Lieberman to succeed Gore as the next Vice President, but would have resulted in the Democrats retaining control of the Senate. Had the House contingent election remained deadlocked on Inauguration Day, then under the provisions of the Twentieth Amendment the new Vice President (whether elected by the Electoral College or by the Senate) would have acted as President until the contingent election was resolved.

The following table compares actual number of pledged presidential electors that have been elected since 1932 to the number who would have been elected under the Wyoming Rule, based on the apportionments given in the previous section's table. Any uncertainties and assumptions are noted for each election. Also, for the sake of simplicity and because faithless electors have never successfully changed the result of an election, and because the number of faithless electors under the Wyoming Rule cannot be known, faithless electors are ignored for the purposes of this table. The table only tabulates pledged electors and counts faithless electors as if they voted as pledged.