I was trying to figure out which states were most over/under-represented in winning presidential elections, so i put together a spreadsheet with all 57 elections. Thought i'd share some findings. Maybe before proceeding see if you can guess which states have elected more presidents than they deserve, and which have been most shafted.
Which states have cast the most EVs in our history?
The basic idea was that a state should elect presidents in proportion to their Electoral votes. Currently California has 55 EV out of 538 so their share is 10.2%, each cycle they should elect .102 presidents, or they should elect president every 10 elections.
of course the EVs and the # states vary over time, so i created a spreadsheet with every election (thanks to this site http://uselectionatlas.org/ ).
The rule was that the president was assigned to the state where he was elected from, not born or lived in. So Lincoln belongs to Illinois and not Kentucky. Eisenhower was (surprising to me) credited to New York. Again, home state was simply lifted from that website. If Hilary is elected, she'll count for NY (sorry Illinois, Arkansas and DC).
So in 57 elections, only 16 states have elected presidents. Of the 13 original colonies, only 6 have elected presidents (GA, MA, NH, NJ, NY, PA, VA)
In those circumstances, a few states have of course dominated.
NY 10
VA 8
OH 7
IL 6
CA 5
MA 4
TX 4
TN 3
There's 31 of 57 presidents from 4 states and 47 of 57 presidents from 8 states. Your over-reprented list is right there.
Only 8 states have cast over 800 EVs in the history of the county
NY 2039
PA 1596
OH 1126
CA 1016
IL 1015
MA 846
VA 824
TX 822
You should be able to guess which state has cast the fewest.
Delware might be the most consistent. They've voted in every election and had 3 EV in 54 of them (4 EV in 1812 1816 & 1820)
So the most over-represented states are
VA +5.23 (8 Presidents, 2.77 expected presidents)
NY +4.60 (10 Presidents, 5.40 expected presidents)
OH +4.27 (7 Presidents, 2.73 expected presidents)
IL +3.80 (6 Presidents, 2.20 expected presidents)
CA +3.03 (5 Presidents, 1.97 expected presidents)
TX +2.38 (4 Presidents, 1.62 expected presidents)
TN +1.48 (3 Presidents, 1.52 expected presidents)
MA +1.41 (4 Presidents, 2.59 expected presidents)
Of course VA is home to 8 of the first nine presidents, but has been shut out since 1824. If that continues, they should reach proper parity by the year 2876.
The most correctly represented is New Hampshire (1 Presidents, 0.94 expected presidents)
And the most under-represented are
AL -1.06 (0 Presidents, 1.06 expected presidents)
CT -1.32 (0 Presidents, 1.32 expected presidents)
MI -1.38 (0 Presidents, 1.38 expected presidents)
SC -1.48 (0 Presidents, 1.48 expected presidents)
MD -1.60 (0 Presidents, 1.60 expected presidents)
KY -1.68 (0 Presidents, 1.68 expected presidents)
NC -2.01 (0 Presidents, 2.01 expected presidents)
PA -3.40 (1 Presidents, 4.40 expected presidents)
So my own state of Pennsylvania is most under-represented, by far. In spite of being the only under-represented state to elect a president. So show us some love soon. If you elect another Pennsylvanian, a can almost promise he will be better than James Buchanan and probably not let us slide into another civil war. Unless it's Santorum...