If the US had held a truly national popular vote election, where the candidates and the voters knew thtat the outcome was going to be decided by a popular vote of the whole nation…
Who do think would win?
I was thinking about this and my first thought was actually that Bush would win, because I think more of the Nader voters would have stayed loyal as opposed to switching to Gore, since in a National election theyre would be even less incentive to try and make your vote count. Also the larger states such as California and New York whcih were pretty much conceded to Gore would have seen more emphasis from Republicans and Bush, probably scaring up a more Republican votes in those states.
But this is pure speculation on my part, just wondering what other folks might think.
A popular vote just might go republican. People who don’t know or understand the issues tend to vote republican. Seems safer, I guess. And they (R’s) promise you all that money.
Peace,
mangeorge
Then again, possibly Gore. Many people voted for Nader since their states (most of them) were already won by one of the two “main” candidates. If it weren’t the silly state ballot a lot of them would have voted for Gore instead.
Are we talking about a run-off? Only Bush and Gore would get to play, right?
According to the pollsters (if you want to believe them) the numbers went something along these lines.
When asked what they would have done if Nader wasn’t running.
52% would vote for Gore
23% would vote for Bush
20% would have stayed home
5% didn’t know
So if we held a run-off it would probably go Gore’s way. Although at this point it might just go to whomever the Undecided voters were less pissed off at.
Actually, bio-brst, I was not referring to a run-off, although that is an interesting question in itslef.
I was interested in what might be the outcome if the two year campaigning process and the actual Nov. 7 election were decided by a National popular vote, as many have called for.
The point really is that although Gore won the popular vote in this EC election it does not necessarily mean he would’ve won an actual popular vote election. I was just curios as to opinions as to who might win such an election.
It seems to me that the problems with this election are a rousing endorsement for the Electoral college. Consider:
If this close race had to be decided by a count of the popular vote, we would be in big trouble. Imagine the nightmare of having to make sure that each ballot in, say, California, was accurately counted before a winner was declared. New Mexico would be a non-issue. Correct me if I’m wrong (as I am unwilling to do the math) but isn’t the Popular margin smaller than Florida’s? Percent wise?
As it is there are a few close states that may or may not need recounted (Florida, New Mexico, Iowa, Oregon). This is a much less daunting task than trying to recount all votes across the country. As it is, we don’t have to recount New York,
The further this mess moves forward, the more it seems to me that the Founding Fathers were Freaking Geniuses.
This isn’t even to mention the idea of not having the new leader take office for a couple of months, giving us ample time to take care of any anomalies. Genius.
Beautiful. I guess you voted Republican then. This might be the most ignorantly biased statements I’ve seen here yet on the subject of this election. It’s pathetic.
Huh? I can’t make any sense of that claim. In fact I heard repeatedly that one of the main reasons our votes “didn’t count” was that the EC existed, totally contrary to the claim here. I don’t see a convincing argument here that people would vote any differently than they already did.
(Except that vote-swapping would not take place, but then vote-swapping wasn’t designed to change the overall numbers anyway.)
Yes, at the expense of Bush votes in other areas. How do you get a net gain?
What does seem to change, as your last quote implies, is that candidates can no longer concentrate on “battleground” states. My single favorite reason for getting rid of the EC.
Well the first part I was simply expounding on the principle that the more votes ther are the less chance you will be the deciding vote. Youa re more likely to be the deciding vote the fewer people there are. Now this may not hold true for most folks, but for voters “on the margin” it will. And no it is not clear what they would do, I was just speculating that more of the Nader fans would stick then under the surrent system. However, I can see scenarios where that would not be the case. Also a National popular election could very well influence not just who people vote for, but whether they vote at all or not.
On the second point that candidates will spend money and time so as to maximize the potential benefit. So where can they reach the most potential voters? In highly populated areas. Also they may change their “promises” top try and effect those voters more. Sure they will lose voters they currently try to win. But axiomatically, since in a national popular election system they could mimic their strategies in the current system, they can at least unilaterally improve on them. However, since it is a zero-sum game (i.e. one vote for me is one less vote for you) it is not clear in the game-theoretic setting whether anyone be a net gainer. But it is not simply a case of shifting focus from one equal set of voters to another.
But that was the point of the whole question, what do people think would happen. I for one do not think the current popular vote is a particularly good proxy for a true popular vote.
