Electoral College Victory, Popular Vote Loss: The New Norm in U.S. Presidential Elections?

When I was a boy learning about civics back in the 1980s, the idea that a person could win the Electoral College, but lose the popular vote was a novelty.  Sure it had happened three times already in U.S. history.  But the last time was in 1888, when Benjamin Harris beat Grover Cleveland.  As old as some of my teachers were, none of them had lived through that election.

Indeed, the latest examples for us were the Electoral College landslides of 1980 and 1984. We had teachers who liked to point out that a shift of just a few thousand votes in West Virginia in 1960 would have given Richard Nixon the Electoral College victory despite losing the popular vote.  But the fact was, it hadn't happened in almost 100 years.

But now it has happened twice in a sixteen year period.  Both elections involved a popular vote that was so close between the two major candidates that less than one percent separated them.  Both elections involved neither party receiving a majority of popular votes due to third party candidates.  In both instances, the Republican candidate emerged victorious in the Electoral College.

What was once a novelty of our system I believe has become a more likely outcome in future presidential elections.  It all has to do with demographics, and how the Electors are distributed.

Representation in the Electoral College rides off of a state's representation in Congress.  Each state gets the same number of Electors as it has Representatives in the House and Senators.  The District of Columbia gets at least the same number of Electors as the least populous state, which right now is three.

We all know that each state gets two Senators regardless of population.  That gives states with smaller populations the advantage.  In a state like California, there are approximately 680,000 people per Elector.  But in a state such as Montana, there are about 330,000 people per Elector.  Thus, if you live in a state with a smaller population, your vote in the presidential election has a greater weight.

When you compare the election results since the 1990s, what you see is that Democratic voters tend to congregate in states with a large population along the coasts.  Indeed, the Democratic candidates won by huge margins in New York and California.  Smaller western states, such as Montana, Idaho Utah, North Dakota and South Dakota tend to vote Republican.  That means that proportionally speaking, because of where voters live, Republican voters tend to count more in presidential elections. 

We all know, then, that presidential elections come down to the battleground states.  These are the states where the populations tend to be split more evenly among Democratic and Republican voters.  In those years where the elections are close, but the trend in these battleground states is to break with the Republican candidate, it will be more likely that the Republican will win enough states to secure an Electoral College victory, but when the tally of nation-wide popular votes is reported, win less than the Democratic counterpart.  Unless Democrats move out of cities like New York City and Los Angeles and into more rural areas, this trend is likely to continue.

Whether you believe this system should be changed is largely determined by whether your candidate wins.  The loudest calls for change in the Electoral College have not surprisingly come from Democratic voters.  But I recall a discussion during the 2000 campaign, that imagined the alternative possibility.  Namely, it was postulated that George W. Bush could win the popular vote but lose to Al Gore in the Electoral College.  It was further postulated that the Bush Campaign was ready to litigatie if that occurred.  Of course, we know that the opposite was true, that Al Gore narrowly lost the Electoral College and commenced litigation in Florida over the manner by which paper ballots were counted.  It was a contentious legal battle that very quickly found its way to the Supreme Court, and had this country uncertain for some time over who won the election.

In the end, the Electoral College is a method enshrined in the Constitution.  It can be changed, but only by a constitutional amendment.  Given that all of the methods of amending the Constitution require a super majority and that our electorate appears to be evenly split, it seems likely that the Electoral College is here to stay for quite some time.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Be Careful Not to Interpret Too Much Into the 2016 Elections

Let the misinterpretation of election results begin!

Many of my hard core Republican friends have been ecstatic this past week.  There are feelings of vindication, and outright joy in having beaten back the dragon that was Hillary Clinton.

I chose to vote Libertarian this time around, but I have to admit a certain relief that there will not be another Clinton in the White House.  Of course, that relief is tempered with the realization that we will have Donald Trump.

If you have been listening to talk radio this week, you cannot miss the elation in the voices of the likes of Rush Limbaugh.  What is more, Limbaugh is outright proclaiming this election to be a complete repudiation of President Obama's policies and the Democrats' liberal ideology.  He is outright warning Trump not to accommodate liberals in his administration.

Surely the more extreme wing of the Republican Party, the Tea Partiers, will see it that way too.  A victory like this, where Republicans not only won the White House, but retained the House of Representatives and the Senate, will only encourage their "no compromises" attitude.  Although there is no credible threat, you can almost hear the Tea Partiers' desire to oust House Speaker Paul Ryan, who failed to adhere strictly to complete support of Trump during the campaign.

Republicans, however, need to be very careful about reading too much into this election.  To be frank, this was far from an ideological landslide.  Trump may have won a majority of Electoral College votes, but let's be clear.  Hillary won a plurality of national popular votes.  The GOP may have retained the House and Senate.  But along the way, they lost about seven seats in the House and three, possibly four, seats in the Senate.  From these numbers alone, this was certainly not an election where the Republican presidential candidate was so popular that his coat tails swept in numerous new Republican legislators.

Exit poll numbers point to this being an election where the voters, or at least those who lived in battle ground states, rejected a candidate perceived as corrupt and dishonest.

A few numbers jumped out to me from the election results that support this conclusion.  First, Trump received fewer votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012.  Second, Hillary's margins of victory with African-American, Latino, Asian and Young voters were smaller than those of Barrack Obama from 2012.  What these numbers tell me is that the voters just did not show up for Hillary the way they did for Obama in 2012.  For whatever reasons, Hillary was just not as exciting a candidate as the current President.

This is not surprising given the atmosphere of the campaign.  This was by far an extremely negative campaign.  This was true of both sides.  From the beginning of September, the Clinton camp was running television ads emphasizing Trump's negatives.  And of course, Trump's campaign mantra was "Let's jail Hillary."  There was very little on display about issues or agendas.  This was totally a personality campaign.

Such campaigns traditionally result in low turn out.  Voters hear over and over again how this candidate is the next Satan, no the other candidate is the next Satan.  Many voters get so discouraged by the choice, that they simply choose not to vote.  Those who do vote choose mainly to vote against someone, and not for their chosen candidate.  In elections like this, it is usually the last bit of bad news released before the actual election that decides the winner.  Hillary drew the short straw, as the announcement of FBI Director James Comey eleven days before the election reminded many voters of her negatives.  By time Comey sounded the all clear two days before the election, on a Sunday when most Americans were watching football, it was too late.

The 2016 election can only be seen as more of a repudiation of a bad candidate than as a triumph of any particular ideology.  Republicans would do themselves a favor if they keep this in mind.  While they are poised to control the two policy making branches of government, and may have a heavy influence on the judicial branch for years to come, a sharp turn to the right could make this victory short-lived.  The House and Senate will stand for election again in just two years.  If there is a radical ideological shift in the government that proves unpopular, the GOP could find their slim majorities erased.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.