Donald Trump has said he wants a new Supreme Court justice confirmed quickly because he expects the court to decide the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. A new study finds that the Electoral College system significantly increases the possibility of that happening — and the data suggest that such a process is far more likely to help Republicans win the White House.

“It is much more likely under the Electoral College than under the national popular vote that the election outcome will be narrow enough to be reversible by judicial or administrative processes,” concludes a new study from University of Texas researchers. “The Electoral College today is about 40 times as likely as a National Popular Vote to generate scenarios in which a small number of ballots in a pivotal voting unit determines the Presidency.”

Analyzing elections from 1988 to 2016, the study also found that “it has been about twice as likely that a Democratic Electoral College victory in a close election would be within a disputable, 1,000 vote margin in a pivotal state than that a Republican Electoral College victory would be.”