IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT …
The 2016 presidential election was one of the most controversial because Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hilary Clinton in the decisive electoral college vote, but became only the fifth of 45 presidents elected without winning the popular vote. According to FactCheck.org, the five elected presidents who did not win the popular vote are: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), George W. Bush (2000), and Donald J. Trump (2016).
Trump’s election has brought the electoral college system under intense partisan scrutiny. Nearly every Democrat running for president in the 2020 election supports the abolishment of the electoral college and, as of March 2019, twelve states and the District of Columbia adopted the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), an agreement to award all electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote.
We will explore the wisdom of abolishing or reforming the electoral college system at the conclusion of this posting, but first let’s establish the facts.
When a presidential candidate wins the popular vote in a state, he wins electoral votes from that state. In 48 out of 50 states, the successful candidate collects all electoral votes from that state. This method of awarding electoral votes is commonly known as “winner-take-all.” In two states, Nebraska and Maine, the electoral votes are distributed proportionally; in other words, they allocate their electoral votes to the presidential candidates based on which did better in each congressional district.
In 2016, Trump defeated Clinton by winning the electoral college vote 306 to 232. The electoral map below identifies which states were won by whom and how many electoral votes were awarded by state.
Clinton (65,853,514) won the popular vote by beating Trump (62,984,828) with a 2,868,686 vote margin.
We included third party candidates in the popular vote chart above because it is instructive to understand how their voters were politically aligned.
On the left, Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, campaigned on many issues popular with Democrats — a Green New Deal, free public education, cancelation of student debt, shifting the U.S. to 100% renewable energy by 2030, cutting military spending by 50%, medical care for all, and reparations for slavery.
On the right, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, and Evan McMullin, the Independent candidate, campaigned on many issues popular with Republicans. Johnson, an American businessman, author, and politician who served as the 29th governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, was a Republican until he ran as the Libertarian Party nominee for President in the 2012 and 2016 elections. His 2016 running mate was former Republican Governor of Massachusetts Bill Weld. Johnson’s platform issues when he ran for governor of New Mexico were low-taxes, anti-crime, and a common sense business approach. McMullin, a Mormon, CIA operations officer, Wharton MBA grad, investment banker, senior adviser on national security issues for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and chief policy director for the House Republican Conference, was a Republican until August 2016 when he launched his campaign as an Independent and was backed by the organization Better for America and members of the “Never Trump” movement. McMullin’s platform issues were anti-abortion / pro-life, traditional marriage between a man and woman, free trade, tax and entitlement cuts, secure borders, and appointing originalist Supreme Court justices.
After the 2016 presidential election, Democrats were angry with Jill Stein. They complained she siphoned off 1.5 million votes that might have otherwise helped Clinton win election in key battleground states. However, we find it interesting that no one ever mentioned the potential impact on Trump’s popular vote count if Gary Johnson and Evan McMullin hadn’t siphoned off a whopping 5.2 million votes.
It is impossible to say what percentage of those 6.7 million votes that Trump and Clinton might have captured if the third party candidates hadn’t run, but it is fair to say that almost one million more American voters favored right-wing policies aligned with Trump’s conservative campaign platform.
Another way to assess the popular voter is to break it down by counties. There are roughly 3,100 counties in America. Trump won approximately 2,600 counties to Clinton’s 500, which is fewer than any popular vote winner in the past 100 years. Trump counties represent ~84% of the geographic United States and are mostly located in non-urban cities, small towns and rural communities. Clinton won 88 of of the 100 largest counties (including Washington D.C.) by 12.6 million votes. Clinton counties are mostly located in coastal urban centers, big cities, affluent white-collar suburbs and college towns. In the roughly 3,000 counties beyond the 100 largest, Trump beat Clinton by 11.5 million votes.
In the three dimensional prism map below of counties voting in the 2016 presidential election, Color = winner and margin of victory and Height = total number of votes. This map helps identify the counties with the highest population densities and most lopsided vote tallies.
The chart below further highlights the popular vote concentration in large urban cities, as Clinton won 4.2 million more votes than Trump in just five counties represented by the tallest and bluest towers in the prism map. In fact, just two counties — Los Angeles (10.2 million population) and Cook (5.2 million population) — almost completely account for Clinton’s 2.9 million total popular vote advantage.
WHY THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE?
(Reprinted from an article by ThoughtCo)
Most voters would be unhappy to see their candidate win the most votes but lose the election. So why would the Founding Fathers create a constitutional process that would allow this to happen?
The Framers of the Constitution wanted to make sure the people were given direct input in choosing their leaders and saw two ways to accomplish this:
1. The people of the entire nation would vote for and elect the president and vice president based on popular votes alone. A direct popular election.
2. The people of each state would elect their members of the U.S. Congress by direct popular election. The members of Congress would then express the wishes of the people by electing the president and vice president themselves. An election by Congress.
The Founding Fathers feared the direct popular election option. There were no organized national political parties yet, no structure from which to choose and limit the number of candidates. In addition, travel and communication were slow and difficult at that time. A very good candidate could be popular regionally but remain unknown to the rest of the country. A large number of regionally popular candidates would thus divide the vote and not indicate the wishes of the nation as a whole.
On the other hand, election by Congress would require the members to both accurately assess the desires of the people of their states and to actually vote accordingly. This could have led to elections that better reflected the opinions and political agendas of the members of Congress than the actual will of the people.
As a compromise, we have the Electoral College system.
Considering that only five times in our history has a candidate lost the popular national vote but been elected by electoral vote, the system has worked pretty well.
REPUBLICAN ARGUMENTS FOR KEEPING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE SYSTEM:
(Portions of articles by National Review and Snopes are reprinted below)
The Electoral College guarantees that candidates who seek the only nationally elected office in America must attempt to appeal to as broad a geographic constituency as possible — large states and small, populous and rural — rather than retreating to their preferred pockets and running up the score. The alternative to this arrangement is not less political contention or a reduction in anger; it is more of both.
Large, densely populated Democrat counties and cities (LA, Chicago, NYC, Seattle, Miami, etc) don’t and shouldn’t speak for the rest of the country.
The legislative branch of the U.S. federal government already addresses the “bimodal divide” of the electorate by employing a bicameral system in which one chamber (the House of Representatives) represents states based on population, while the other chamber (the Senate) represents all states equally, regardless of population.
DEMOCRAT ARGUMENTS FOR ABOLISHING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE SYSTEM:
(Portions of articles by National Review and National Popular Vote are reprinted below)
The President of the United States is democratically elected to work for the benefit of all the people who live in the United States, not to represent geography.
County (and city) voting totals are of no relevance in presidential elections; only state-wide voting totals count.
The shortcomings of the electoral college system stem from “winner-take-all” laws. Presidential candidates have no reason to pay attention to the issues of concern to voters in states where the statewide outcome is a foregone conclusion. In 2016, almost all campaign events (94%) were in the 12 states where Trump’s support was between 43% and 51%. Two-thirds of the events (273 of 399) were in just 6 states (OH, FL, VA, NC, PA, MI). Tens of states were completely ignored.
State winner-take-all statutes adversely affect governance. “Battleground” states receive 7% more federal grants than “spectator” states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.
FH OPINION: DON’T MESS WITH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE SYSTEM
Given electoral college rules, Trump ignored large Democrat strongholds like coastal urban cities and focused on decisive toss-up states. That smart campaign strategy, along with a likable candidate and populist message, proved to be a winning combination.
Despite electoral college rules, Clinton ignored decisive toss-up states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and focused on large Democrat strongholds. That dumb (or lazy or overconfident) strategy, along with an unlikable candidate and elitist message, proved to be a losing combination.
So this is the new Democrat party strategy: If you don’t win, change the rules? Rather than accept and learn from defeat, you’re going to abolish or reform election laws that have ensured democracy, freedom and the peaceful transition of power better than any other political system on earth for more than two centuries?
No! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Pick the right candidate with the right message and campaign smarter next time!