"The President is behind by 3.5 million votes nationwide and that will impact the Electoral College."
Not strictly true. Running the numbers of 2016 from both CNN & DailyKos (that bastion of reason :-P ), Hillary's popular vote margin was ~+3Million. When Cali is removed from that count, popular vote shifted to Trump ~+1.5-2Mil dependin…
"The President is behind by 3.5 million votes nationwide and that will impact the Electoral College."
Not strictly true. Running the numbers of 2016 from both CNN & DailyKos (that bastion of reason :-P ), Hillary's popular vote margin was ~+3Million. When Cali is removed from that count, popular vote shifted to Trump ~+1.5-2Mil depending on the source. California alone accounted for a 3.5M popularity vote swing. That would mean that Electoral map can be vastly different from the popular vote map.
In addition, the 3rd party dilution of "really can't vote for Trump" Repubs (that was me in 2016) is also gone. The popular vote vs. Electoral College comparison remains apples and oranges, heavily weighted on either side by deeply blue states on the left coast + east coast and deeply red states like TX and OK.
Again, Founding Fathers' wisdom treating POTUS election by states' preference rather than a mob-mentality vote from the super-blue cities and coasts. Somehow they understood and codified before France proved the mob-rule Democracy disaster during the French Revolution.
But is it wise when some of these states are so close. I do think there needs to be support throughout the country but if the difference is 30k votes.....
I live in California, and of course fully agree, as I'm sure vandalii does, that California is a part of this country. I think the point vandalii is making is that "behind in the popular vote" does not mean "impact on the electoral college", since California has such a high impact on the popular vote.
One other interesting note on popular vote...since California and New York are DEEPLY blue, I wonder how many Republicans (and like minded Independents) simply choose to not vote, since they know it won't change anything, this increasing even more the popular vote margin in the country.
Maybe...I've read multiple comments from people with this idea. I'm not 100% sure...would need to think about it more.
A couple thoughts...
First, how much different is proportional representation from simply counting the popular vote? If the electoral college is based off of groups of voters (ie. 10,000 votes like you mentioned below), then how different is that from simply going full popular vote?
Second, while I am not a big historian, I tend to see things this way...
House of Representatives - represents the population
Senate - represents the states
Presidency - represents the population AND the states.
Popular vote (and potentially proportional representation) would remove the "states" part of that equation.
...and deeply left. It is 1/50th of this nation's states (even if 15% of the population). We are a united federation of states, not a pure democracy. "fly over country" gets ignored by both coasts to their peril. The rules of engagement are "win the most Electoral votes", not "win the popularity contest". Hillary failed to campaign effectively assuming states held by O would stay blue. Trump fought for the votes in those states and turned them. Yes, by a small margin. But that is the rule of law. Hillary chose to blow that by ignoring what she assumed she was "entitled" to win.
OTOH, Covid really threw a wrench in the works from both a campaign and a voting perspective. Biden's basement strategy prevented more of his gaffes from coming out. Voting by mail/absentee/drop off plays right into the hands of activists. Erick says in "Messenger vs. Message" today "Democrats are not out manufacturing tens of thousands of votes ". That is arguably a foolish statement to make. The left are pure utilitarians, "end justifies the means" kinds of activists. Keep in mind that "tens of thousands of votes", if spread across 5,000 activists is really only a few manufactured votes each, put in the trunk of a car collectively, etc. It is not outside the realm of possibility that true TDS Dems aren't willing to bend the rules by a few each...amounting to tens of thousands when considering 62million Dems vote across the country.
Play the Electoral College game or go home. That's how this runs.
Agreed. The ease of which 1000's of activists could tilt an election is not hard to imagine.
Second, I find in the popular vote argument a false belief. "Oh look, get rid of the electoral college because of the popular vote". Yes, but as you mentioned about campaigning, if we went to a popular vote model, then the candidates would try to win the popular vote rather than the electoral college, which is not what they're doing now.
In that scenario, candidates would spend tons of time in California, New York, Florida and Texas. I wonder how many people, after a switch to that model, would than be saying, "Maybe we should switch back to the electoral college model". lol Although, by that point, the system would be ruined and we probably wouldn't switch back.
But then we get know screaming about 10k vote difference in one state and they don’t campaign in big states at all which is why proportional should be good
maybe...but again, I'm not sure that proportional representation solves it, since their greatest number of votes will come from the big states (New York, California, Florida, Texas), so they would probably spend more time there and ignore the rest of the country.
"The President is behind by 3.5 million votes nationwide and that will impact the Electoral College."
Not strictly true. Running the numbers of 2016 from both CNN & DailyKos (that bastion of reason :-P ), Hillary's popular vote margin was ~+3Million. When Cali is removed from that count, popular vote shifted to Trump ~+1.5-2Mil depending on the source. California alone accounted for a 3.5M popularity vote swing. That would mean that Electoral map can be vastly different from the popular vote map.
In addition, the 3rd party dilution of "really can't vote for Trump" Repubs (that was me in 2016) is also gone. The popular vote vs. Electoral College comparison remains apples and oranges, heavily weighted on either side by deeply blue states on the left coast + east coast and deeply red states like TX and OK.
Again, Founding Fathers' wisdom treating POTUS election by states' preference rather than a mob-mentality vote from the super-blue cities and coasts. Somehow they understood and codified before France proved the mob-rule Democracy disaster during the French Revolution.
Now Biden is up four million in the popular vote. Still no effect? That would be laughable.
But is it wise when some of these states are so close. I do think there needs to be support throughout the country but if the difference is 30k votes.....
I live in California, and of course fully agree, as I'm sure vandalii does, that California is a part of this country. I think the point vandalii is making is that "behind in the popular vote" does not mean "impact on the electoral college", since California has such a high impact on the popular vote.
One other interesting note on popular vote...since California and New York are DEEPLY blue, I wonder how many Republicans (and like minded Independents) simply choose to not vote, since they know it won't change anything, this increasing even more the popular vote margin in the country.
Yes maybe there get proportional representation in the electoral college is the fairest way around this than every vote would count
Maybe...I've read multiple comments from people with this idea. I'm not 100% sure...would need to think about it more.
A couple thoughts...
First, how much different is proportional representation from simply counting the popular vote? If the electoral college is based off of groups of voters (ie. 10,000 votes like you mentioned below), then how different is that from simply going full popular vote?
Second, while I am not a big historian, I tend to see things this way...
House of Representatives - represents the population
Senate - represents the states
Presidency - represents the population AND the states.
Popular vote (and potentially proportional representation) would remove the "states" part of that equation.
It’s still based on states so the proportion would be states electoral votes this is done in primaries. I really think it would be better
Second California is part of this country.
...and deeply left. It is 1/50th of this nation's states (even if 15% of the population). We are a united federation of states, not a pure democracy. "fly over country" gets ignored by both coasts to their peril. The rules of engagement are "win the most Electoral votes", not "win the popularity contest". Hillary failed to campaign effectively assuming states held by O would stay blue. Trump fought for the votes in those states and turned them. Yes, by a small margin. But that is the rule of law. Hillary chose to blow that by ignoring what she assumed she was "entitled" to win.
OTOH, Covid really threw a wrench in the works from both a campaign and a voting perspective. Biden's basement strategy prevented more of his gaffes from coming out. Voting by mail/absentee/drop off plays right into the hands of activists. Erick says in "Messenger vs. Message" today "Democrats are not out manufacturing tens of thousands of votes ". That is arguably a foolish statement to make. The left are pure utilitarians, "end justifies the means" kinds of activists. Keep in mind that "tens of thousands of votes", if spread across 5,000 activists is really only a few manufactured votes each, put in the trunk of a car collectively, etc. It is not outside the realm of possibility that true TDS Dems aren't willing to bend the rules by a few each...amounting to tens of thousands when considering 62million Dems vote across the country.
Play the Electoral College game or go home. That's how this runs.
Agreed. The ease of which 1000's of activists could tilt an election is not hard to imagine.
Second, I find in the popular vote argument a false belief. "Oh look, get rid of the electoral college because of the popular vote". Yes, but as you mentioned about campaigning, if we went to a popular vote model, then the candidates would try to win the popular vote rather than the electoral college, which is not what they're doing now.
In that scenario, candidates would spend tons of time in California, New York, Florida and Texas. I wonder how many people, after a switch to that model, would than be saying, "Maybe we should switch back to the electoral college model". lol Although, by that point, the system would be ruined and we probably wouldn't switch back.
But then we get know screaming about 10k vote difference in one state and they don’t campaign in big states at all which is why proportional should be good
maybe...but again, I'm not sure that proportional representation solves it, since their greatest number of votes will come from the big states (New York, California, Florida, Texas), so they would probably spend more time there and ignore the rest of the country.