EV Analysis

I did an analysis on the popular vote versus the Electoral College vote. I’d love to share my spreadsheet with you all, so if someone can tell me the best way to make it available, I’d be happy to comply.

It seems to me there are 2 predominate schools of thought on the EC:

  1. The EC is necessary because otherwise the less populated areas won’t really count in Presidential elections.

  2. The EC is outdated. Why should the vote of a Kansas farmer count more than the vote of a Chicago factory worker?

The first analysis I did is one that I know has been done before – determine how many popular votes equate to one EC vote. I think the analyses I’ve seen before used registered voters. My analysis used actual voters, and shows that the range by state is 85,283 for Wyoming to 327,427 for Florida. (I was surprised it was Florida; I was expecting it to be a blue state). This means that a vote in Wyoming was “worth” almost 4 times as much as a vote in Florida.

The second analysis was a bit more interesting. I decided that maybe there is value in the EC system, but it’s too lopsided. What would happen if a state’s EC vote wasn’t Winner Takes All, but done proportionally? This would preserve some of the EC value, since a vote in Wyoming would still be worth almost 4 times as much as one in Florida, but swing states would be of less importance.

I had a bit of a problem with the numbers, since rounding error sometimes resulted in the total EC votes from a state not equaling their actual EC entitlement. I resolved this by removing third party and other candidates from the analysis, since none received any EC votes. In anyone has a better idea for handling this, please let me know.

At any rate, the result:

Clinton: 270
Trump: 268

There is a more fundamental issue beyond the the “winner takes all” method of selecting Electoral Votes (and the somewhat nebulous obligation of members of the Electoral College); the assumption that a single chief executive should dominate the legislative agenda for four years with essentially zero control by Congress other than overriding a presidential veto or impeachment. This has pretty obviously led to the rise of identity politics and presidentical campaigns dominated by personality and “message” over policy. It also creates the scenario in which a president can create defacto policy through executive fiat with little in the way of checks or balances except by challenge before the Supreme Court. (Technically, a lower court could challenge an executive order or presidential dictum but but realistically any decision against would be likely be appealed up to the Supreme Court.)

The original intent of the presidency in the US Constitution was to create a strong outward facing head of state (who was also a notional head of government) for allow the young and militarily weak United States face against the older and ostensibly stronger powers of Europe, but that situation has been completely reversed, both that the US is the dominant military power in NATO, and the president has gained considerably executive power such that opposing presidential action has resulted in stopping legislative processes or even threatening (and for Clinton, engaging in) impeachment. By allowing such control by one party is not only can create a situation favorable to demogogary (which is only countered by the public’s awareness of and resistance demagogues) but also marginalized candidates and interests that do not fall on a spectrum dominated by the two major parties, or in the case of a party split, almost inevitably hands the election to the opposing party.

Although it is probably impractical to modify the US system so radically, the Swiss system in which there is an executive council in which members rotate annually to hold the office of president, and the council acts collectively as head of state, is a more equitable system to ensure broader representation and relief from ideological domination of governance. It would also mean that we don’t have to collectively venerate or vilify one single individual for all that is good and bad about the nation, particularly when that individual actually has relatively little control over any specific issue or action, nor is there a single person who can authorize the launch of nuclear weapons or broker and break effective treaty agreements at will. And the politics of the nation doesn’t hinge on whether the elected executive can handle the stress of a 24 hour a day job for four years running without losing perspective or becoming incapacitated through illness or threat.

Stranger

Is this a long way of saying the current legislative/executive balance is out of whack, and the legislative branch should claw back some territory? That’s well within the current constitutional framework.

If we actually divided up EC votes proportionally, I believe Evan McMullin would have won one of Utah’s.

Any system that is not based purely on popular vote is “unfair” in the same way Electoral College system is unfair.

In Canada 2011 elections, Conservatives got 39.6% of popular votes. They received 54% of the seats in the Parliament. Unfair?

In 2015 British elections, someone calculated the number of votes per Member of Parliament for various parties. It goes from about 3.6M for UKIP, to 1.2M for Greens, to around 40K (hard to see exactly from the graph) for the Conservatives. That’s pretty “unfair” isn’t it?

I don’t know how many times this has to be said, but apparently it hasn’t yet been said enough. ** You can’t change the rules after the election and then assume the vote would have been the same as under the rules that were actually in effect during the election.**

Neither candidate got a majority of the vote this election. So the “popular vote should trump [hehe] the electoral college” side apparently wants the House of Representatives to elect Trump instead of the EC. No actual difference in the outcome.

It’s up to the states. Simple as that. A better fix may have been to up the number of representatives in the house. I don’t see why we can’t have 3x the number or so. That would help alleviate some of the extremes.

Unfair? Not necessarily.

That is one aspect of it, but there are credible reasons for having a strong executive authority as well, particularly when the nation has so many foreign interests which are outside the scope of legislative authority, e.g. negotiating agreements with other nations, making decisions about active military and espionage activities, et cetera, for which legislative debate and consensus is too slow or unwieldy and about which Congressional representatives, who are elected primarily based upon how responsive they are on the needs of their constituants’ predominately domestic interests, are not really focused upon. The problem with how the presidency is currently defined is that one person advised by a small body of frequently ideologically aligned advisors determines the course of foreign policy for the duration of a presidential administration.

This is good in the sense of being able of making decisive foreign policy and military decisions (something that Congress manifestly cannot do) but can also lead to a groupthink situation in which the advisors all feed the president guidance that reinforces a particular point of view, resulting in undesirable action without any kind of counterbalance (e.g. the Vietnam War, invasion of Iraq), whereas an executive council would likely have a more measured approach simply by virtue of having to weigh different opinions.

No, of course not; the fact is that baring any revelations of direct tampering with the voting process or mass defection by the Electoral College voters, Donald Trump will be legally elected as President of the United States. But acknowledging that as a fact does not mean that one shouldn’t look at how the result occurred and whether it represents the behavior of a well-balanced system which accurately reflects the collective will of the voters. Either way, this election was ridiculously close particlarly given the spectacularly unsuitable temperment of Trump to hold the office, and regardless of opinions about the the electoral system, the Democrats selected a poor candidate who ran a flailing campaign that was further hindered by ethical lapses that were spun into the perception of big scandals.

Stranger

The point isn’t that one shouldn’t question at all, but one needs to understand the limitations of a static analysis of a dynamic system. When you change the rules of the game, the players pay a different game, as I’m sure you know. It’s like going back to figure out who would have “won” the super bowl if the game were won by whichever team had possession of the ball longer. Doesn’t really make any sense, since neither team was trying to “win” that way.

Why shouldn’t we question the system, exactly? And what strategy would Donald Trump have employed that Hillary would not have to win the popular vote? He already out-campaigned her. Personally, I have never heard of a superbowl decided by “whichever team had possession of the ball longer”, but I have certainly heard of popular vote elections.

That article does not support your point; it says that Trump spent more time than Clinton in “battleground states”, i.e. those that are critical to winning the electoral college, not the popular vote. As John Mace said, if you change the rules, the players will play differently.

How will he play differently? Trump already spent more time than Hillary in some of the most populous states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona. Not only that, but he spent more time in states with undecided voters, such as Colorado and New Hampshire. Texas, the most populous Republican state, has had near static Republican turnout since 2004. Regardless, Trump seems pretty sure he won the popular vote. What tactics do you think he would employ that Hillary would not have access to?

I have a question that ought to be easy to figure out…but I’m not really sure how…

What is the result if the “Senatorial” electors are removed? If, say, Wyoming gets only one, not three? California gets 53, not 55? Assume all else stays the same (if that is even possible.) Does the outcome change?

Doesn’t change it. Deduct 60 from Trump and 40 from Hillary.

I believe Trump won 30 states and Clinton won 20. I assume we’d also deduct two votes from Clinton for winning the District of Columbia, even though they don’t technically have Senators. Just a quick bit of arithmetic, I think the new total would be:

Trump wins with 246 votes to Clinton’s 190.

This is a question of perspective, I guess. Wyoming was never the least bit competitive, and so in practical terms the EC makes voting in Wyoming essentially worthless in terms of its potential impact on the outcome of the election. It’s the voters in swing states whose votes matter more.

Gotcha! Thanks! (I feel so innumerate now; I was thinking it had to be a hard problem to work!)

Neither Donald Trump, nor Hillary Clinton spent any significant time campaigning in California, Texas, New York or Illinois. As a result, the vote totals in those four states (which are four of the top five in population, and contain eight of the top ten cities by population) were based upon little or no input from the candidates directed at them.

Donald Trump’s campaign strategy was tailored to produce an Electoral College victory. He told everyone how he was going to do it early in the game. His focus was always on the rust belt, where he thought he could flip states filled with angry, frustrated voters who often voted for the Democratic candidate. He was, as it turns out, correct. See: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania (and while we’re at it, Ohio, which wasn’t a flip, so much, but which the Clinton campaign was hoping to convert).

Had the election been a popularity contest, based upon a national vote, he would never have campaigned that way. His themes would have been different, either completely different, or different in how they were framed. He probably would have positioned himself to win over the affection of suburbanites and the remaining white central city residents. That this is possible is made clear by the fact that California and New York manage to elect Republicans for their Governorship, even though they almost always vote Democrat for the President. See also Illinois for this.

California is VERY instructive here. For reasons having to do with the attempt of the politicians and citizens of California to shake up the political status quo, the ballot in November had two Democrats facing off over the Senate seat up for grabs. Under the circumstances, and given that most of the House seats remain stubbornly uncompetitive, it would not be surprising to learn that California had tons of Republicans who either: stayed home or didn’t vote at all for President (article today says that, in 33 states for which the numbers could be tallied, 1.7M voters (2%) of the total who voted that day didn’t vote for any presidential candidate!). But we’ll never know, because we don’t get to run the election multiple times with different systems in place.

This simple fact blunts any attempt to analyze what “would” have happened, had a different system of any type been in place. Sports analogies are easy, because they are simple and usually understood. If we replayed the World Cup of 2014 with winners determined not by goals, but by shots on goal, would the fact that a team got more shots on goal, but didn’t score, mean that they would necessarily win the re-structured contest? Of course not. This is no different.