Throughout the Republican primary season, the favorite fallback story angle for pundits was one that hyped the possibility of a deadlock that would lead to an open or contested GOP convention. That was always highly unlikely, and in the end it didn’t come close to happening. Mitt Romney wound up sweeping the field and the Tampa convention was the usual boring political infomercial, rather than one that harkened back to the colorful and unpredictable political conclaves that were par for the course in an earlier era of American history. The yearning for this anomaly said more about the desire of the media for something interesting to cover than anything else, but it must be admitted that it was always a possibility, albeit one that had very little chance of coming to pass. Several months later, the media has a new meme along the same lines: the possibility that one candidate will win the popular vote while losing the Electoral College. This, too, is unlikely. But given both recent history and the way some of the polls are looking, this one is a bit more difficult to dismiss.
As much as it is difficult to understand what exactly the myriad of polls are telling us about the presidential race, there does appear to be a difference between the way President Obama’s standing in the national polls has declined and his ability to remain competitive if not ahead in many of the key swing states. If this continued, it could mean that Mitt Romney would win the popular vote but still lose the Electoral College as the president won razor-thin majorities in a few battleground states such as Ohio, Iowa and Colorado. If this happened, Democrats who cried bloody murder in 2000 when George W. Bush found a similar path to the presidency would enjoy the turnabout and Republicans who defended the arcane system would suddenly discover the necessity of its abolition. But before we start preparing ourselves for another Bush v. Gore Armageddon, it’s important to point out that while it is possible, it’s probably not going to happen.
I’ve taken issue with some of Nate Silver’s conclusions about the race recently, but I’ve great respect for the former baseball analyst’s willingness to look at the statistical truth where it can be discerned from what he rightly calls the “noise” that tends to distract us. Silver assessed the likelihood of a number of different scenarios and puts the current odds on their coming to pass in this manner:
How often the following situations occurred during repeated simulated elections.
- Electoral College tie (269 electoral votes for each candidate) 0.4%
- Recount (one or more decisive states within 0.5 percentage points) 10.1%
- Obama wins popular vote 63.8%
- Romney wins popular vote 36.2%
- Obama wins popular vote but loses electoral college 1.7%
- Romney wins popular vote but loses electoral college 5.8%
- Obama landslide (double-digit popular vote margin) 0.7%
- Romney landslide (double-digit popular vote margin) 0.2%
- Map exactly the same as in 2008 0.1%
- Map exactly the same as in 2004 <0.1%
- Obama loses at least one state he carried in 2008 99.5%
- Obama wins at least one state he failed to carry in 2008 4.6%
I think the liberal writer is overly optimistic about Obama’s chances, though you can bet he will revise those numbers in the last days before the election if it looks like Romney is heading to victory. But I have no quarrel with his assessment of the other scenarios, especially the one that shows that there is slightly more than one in chance in 20 that Romney wins the popular vote while Obama wins the Electoral College.
The point here is that whether you believe Gallup and its tracking poll that shows Romney up by seven percentage points or Investors Business Daily/ TIPP and its survey that has Obama up by six or the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that calls the race a tie, the odds are that in the last two weeks the swing states will follow the national polls or vice versa. It is far more reasonable to suggest that the trend will break one way or another (or rather, hold steady as Romney continues to gain ground in most surveys that do not, like IBD, have samples that are heavily skewed toward the Democrats) than anything else. That’s why it is also reasonable to assume that whoever wins the presidency may be able to influence enough state races to swing an evenly divided U.S. Senate with them as well.
Nevertheless, the fact that the popular vote diverged from the Electoral College result only 12 years ago means this isn’t merely a discussion that revolves around the unkind fates that befell Democrats Samuel Tilden and Grover Cleveland in 1876 and 1888. If that happens again in 2012 (which would make it only the fifth time in American history that result was obtained), but especially if it happened to a Republican this time, then I would have to agree with New York Times editorial writer Juliet Lapidos that this would probably mean the end of the Electoral College. This will probably not happen, but we may see another Electoral College/popular vote split before we experience another contested national political convention.
"Romney would win the popular vote but still lose the Electoral College". A disaster. But, in any case, we should have gotten rid of the Electoral College in 1776. We preach democracy all over the world, but we do not have it at home. What hypocrites we are. The same goes for our "upper" house. No democracy there. These disgusting non democratic monstrosities were invented to bring the unwilling states into the union. Sheer bribery and extortion.
1787, not '76, and the issue was more complex than most people think. Keep in mind that up until at least the 1830s there were states that did not select electors by popular vote. I wouldn't say these features of the Constitution are non-democratic. Rather, what we have experienced in the last 230 years or so is a steady progression toward what we think of as democracy – the inclusion of more and more people in the process, and the increasingly direct election of our elected officials (direct election of senators, popular vote to select electors). nAs for the electoral college – I would argue that the only real fiasco was 1824, when the will of the people was obviously thwarted by a handful of representatives. The other examples aren't that strong when examined closely. Tilden – how much cheating was their in the South? How many blacks couldn't vote? 1888 – so close, and the margins in the South make one wonder about voter intimidation. Could that have been the 90,000 popular vote difference? nAnd the election of 2000 is hardly conclusive evidence of the failure of the system. Bush lost by 500,000, but in a situation that simply makes it impossible to make much of that difference. Neither candidate campaigned in TX or CA, or IL or NY. How many people voted for a third party candidate or didn't vote because they knew their vote for Bush or Gore simply didn't matter? (Of course, that could easily be used as an argument against the EC.) nA decisive popular vote win and EC loss in a future election could change things, but with the exception of 1824 that has never happened, and perhaps never will. Presidential candidates operate within long-established rules that everyone knows. I fail to see how that is a monstrosity. The electoral college is like slavery – something that had to be tolerated in order to forge the union. Once enshrined as the fundamental law of the nation, it is devilishly difficult to remove.
I guess that I am particularly peeved and aware of the EC inequity because I am in California and my vote will not count in the national election even though I am enormously anti-Obama. CA is always dark blue, solid Democrat, on all the charts presented by pollsters and other predictors. But I will vote anyway. For Romney, of course. The Pope just announced the 'election' of five or so new saints. Maybe miracles are in the air.
Vandag1, I'm in a whimsical mood, so I'll offer a poor pun/joke in reference to your ending: are these what you would call "latter day saints?"
Vandag1, I agree with you. Recently moved to California and recognize the futility. n nThe irony is that my area of California pretty solidly GOP. Congressman, Legislators, etc are all Republican. That is the situation in a number of Blue or Purple states. Just came from Virginia where the large number of GOP counties are too often overwhelmed by the DC suburbs and certain other metro areas. n nI would support an amendment that gave proportional electoral votes within states. n nI would not support a pure popular vote because then great swathes of the country would simply be ignored in favor of the metro areas.
More likely outcome will be that far more states than Nebraska and Maine will amend state constitutions allowing for Electors to vote by congressional district. n nThe Electoral College was meant to keep the uneducated 'rabble' from having too much influence. Might be a lot fairer if EVERY state was a battleground. n nPersonally, if I voted in one of the 106 counties in seven or eight states that will decide this election, I probably would protest vote a 3rd party candidate after a small bonfire of mailers, and aiming my imaginary shotgun at the tv and telephone. n nThe bigger and more pressing reform is the idiocy of the duopoly primary calendar. nyes, the citizens of Iowa and New Hampshire are politically informed, but NO caucus state should be first. n nThe spectacle is broken, but do not blame it on the Electoral College. nMaybe the Dept of Education should require every 8th grader in America to study Civics, like we had before the postmodern multiculturalists decided that was somehow racist.
It also allows small states like ND to still have a say in who is elected.
I still believe that a farmer with two cows and a hog does not deserve 4 votes whereas I have only one. It is idiotic (and I am being kind). Never saw so many nuts than in these comments on this issue. Certainly LOCAL issues should be decided locally. But NATIONAL issues such as the presidency should be decided by all of us EQUALLY. Anything else is an invitation to armed rebellion, such as when the King of England decided what taxes should be paid by colonists over here. He had one more vote than all of the colonists put together.
The King of England did NOT personally decide the taxation policy of Great Britain. Since Magna Carta (1215), when clear limits on the king's ability to tax his subjects were set down in writing for the first time, continuing through the Great Charter's reaffirmation under Henry III (c. 1250), but especially after the execution of Charles I (1649), taxes have been imposed by vote of Parliament—with one exception, and that exception had nothing to do with taxes levied in North America.
Who cares? I was not making an historical point. It was conceptual. The idea that other people were making your decisions on the law, the idea that others had more to say about your political life than you had. For those who unrelentingly pursue the idea that one-man one-vote is not fundamental to justice, then we must come from different planets.
Oh? So now it's a matter of "Who cares?" I wonder why. Your "conceptual" argument excuse won't wash. I'm sorry, but when you write "Anything else is an invitation to armed rebellion, such as when the King of England decided what taxes should be paid by colonists over here. He had one more vote than all of the colonists put together," you are clearly reporting what you believe is the historical record, scarcely one word of which is factual—there was a king in England in 1763, I'll grant you that—so why pretend otherwise? And how may a false historical analogy be persuasive even "conceptually"? n nBy the way, as long as we have our thinking caps on and are going about this "conceptually," some advice. Your high-concept suggestion that the fact that Rhode Island has the same number of senators as California is "an invitation to armed rebellion" is, well, bizarre. What paroxysms of rage you must undergo every June when nine unelected members of the Supreme Court dispose of "national issues" for 310-million people, seemingly without qualm, are horrifying to imagine and excite my deepest sympathies. Stay well clear of firearms at such times.
I think that you're giving Silver too much credit. His methods are opaque to outside observers, meaning that his conclusions are not falsifiable. He can claim that polls change direction and that he takes them into account. Another reason for suspicion is that he's questioned the integrity of other analysts while not acknowledging that he himself was privy to the Obama campaign's internal polling four years ago. nI think that he's right about the likelihood of these unlikely outcomes, but you don't have to have some sophisticated algorithm to conclude that. It's only pundits whose job depends on being creative who give them much credence.
I would be willing to bet that the polls that have Obama ahead in Ohio are still over sampling democrats.
I find Mr Tobin's attribution of cynicism to Republicans and his expressed contempt toward them appalling. I support the electoral college (in some form) and will no matter what happens this year. The founders feared a sectional candidate could, through corruption of the democratic process, roll up huge margins in only parts of the country, have little appeal in other parts and, nevertheless, be elevated to power. They foresaw, although in a different form, the political position of the Democratic party today. Dems keep portions of the population separate, scared, poor and dependent, then roll up huge margins with these populations to form the base of their political power.
"Arcane system" or not, the electoral college prevents CA, NY, FL, and TX from deciding an election. With all due respect to vandag1, and to Mr. Tobin (whom I consider very insightful), we are a Republic, not a true democracy. To quote someone far more brilliant than myself: "A democracy has to be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner".
Thanks for pointing out that we are NOT a democracy, but a representative republic. While it is a complicated discussion, one of the critical junctures of the weakening of the Constitution and its sets of checks and balances was the adoption of the 17th Amendment, by which we went to direct election of Senators. This was an enormous step on the road to the destruction of federalism, as it took away the states' voices in the federal legislature. n nCertainly, there were other significant factors along the way, not the least of which was the SCOTUS's judicial elimination of the 10th Amendment, but had the 17th not been adopted, the Senators might very well have payed closer attention to their state patrons' political power in all manner of deliberations, including the deliberations of who ascended to the SCOTUS itself. n nThe founders/framers were an astute bunch; these and other provisions of the Constitution were not simply matters of political accommodation and compromise.
Yes, and you are correct that the founders were an especially astute group. For as 'smart' and enlightened as we think that we are, currently, could you even fathom us creating something as brilliant as our founders did, with respect to our founding documents? Methinks not, especially seeing what we are now pushing (imposing, mandating!) into new "democracies'" constitutions that this administration is funding. Despite any weaknesses due to compromises made at the time, they truly were the right men at the right time.
"This was an enormous step on the road to the destruction of federalism, as it took away the states' voices in the federal legislature. . . . [H]ad the 17th not been adopted, the Senators might very well have payed closer attention to their state patrons' political power in all manner of deliberations, including the deliberations of who ascended to the SCOTUS itself." n nAn excellent, excellent point that cannot be made too often. The system we have, OUR Federal system, is counter-majoritarian in aim AND design. There are about 50 good reasons for doing that that have NOT gone away since 1787 and have in fact increased since then: the States. The United States, as should be evident in its very name, is a union of States. We have in place a system of dual sovereignties here, which is no accident. n nMatters did not have to fall out that way. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, Framers such as Madison and Mason and Sherman had the examples of Britain and France to contemplate, both monarchies and neither fully consolidated before the end of the 17th Century. Yet in England, the boroughs and baronies, the counties and marches and dukedoms of William III's kingdom retained from the feudal era significant powers in Parliament adverse to that of the monarch, and especially as compared with the like arrangements in Louis XIV's France, such as the provinces, then, as now, largely administrative districts with only ceremonial authority and adhering strictly to the ancient (Roman) guide to jurisprudence: Quod principi placuit, legis vigorem habet [Ulpian], i.e., "Law is whatever pleases a prince." Between 1614 and 1789, the Estates-General, the French national "parlement," had not convened even once. n nOur political system is English, and it doesn't much matter whether that is congenial to anyone or not. There ARE powers, critically important ones, too, that are both lawful and laudable and DO NOT follow from majority rule. One of them is the plain fact that the representatives of Rhode Island exercise as much weight through their opinions as do those from California in the Senate of the United States (though NOT in the Electoral College), something more to be celebrated, I think, than deplored. Montesquieu, whom all of the Framers revered, spoke of the "spirit of the laws." Well, Federalism and its counter-majoritarian logic is integral to the spirit of our laws and may no more be harmlessly tampered with than may a man's heart or lungs. n nTo attack the Electoral College is most definitely NOT, as the demagogues among us would have us believe, to attack a relic bequeathed us by 18th Century aristocrats—or, rather, it is not MERELY that—it is as well an attack on the very practical reasons for the existence of OUR Constitution as opposed to another, which were (and are) neither trivial nor entirely contingent. The Republic was founded because the several States, which were far from homogenous in culture, laws, and mores, opposed the encroachments of the British crown. The "United States" emerged only latterly. n nCulture trumps politics, in my opinion. That fact is essential, not trivial, in understanding our political system and certainly does NOT mean that we are condemned to political balkanization. We are in fact LESS culturally homogenous in 2012 than we were 225 years ago when 95% of the population traced its ancestry to TWO islands off the northwest coast of Europe. Shall we pretend otherwise in our politics?
I can't wait till this election is over…
I strongly support the electoral college. Without it, I believe there would be massive fraud in every inner city to pile up votes for their chosen candidate. With the current system, there is no point; it doesn't matter by how many votes the President wins California or New York. n nI do think that if any state is won by less than 0.25% of the total votes cast, there should be a runoff election. Florida should have had a runoff between Bush and Gore. Minnesota should have had a runoff between Coleman and Franken.