Reapportionment shifted six electoral votes from Democratic to Republican states. If we rerun the election with the electoral vote allocation plus an even split of the popular vote, Obama wins by a very narrow margin— to So the current Democratic structural advantage is four electoral votes—not nothing, but not much either.
The probability that Obama could win reelection without a majority of the popular vote is extremely—vanishingly—low. Given the assumptions underlying the math, the state that Obama carries most narrowly and that puts him over the top is … Colorado, which he would have carried by 1.
For the mathematically challenged: subtract 3. Now back to the real world. Some today argue that the electoral college encourages candidates to campaign across more diverse geographical areas and helps by breaking down the complex process of voting into more manageable areas. Back when the Constitution was being written, however, the process was a compromise between those who believed the President should be elected by Congress and those who thought the chief executive should be elected by a majority of the people.
The framers were also concerned that it might be difficult for voters to learn enough about presidential candidates. The system also gave greater power to more sparsely populated states, and to states with many slaves.
States were able to count enslaved persons toward their populations without giving them the right to vote or even counting them as full people and, as constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar has argued on TIME. Defenders of the Electoral College also have a major advantage.
The process is enshrined in the Constitution, which means that a Constitutional amendment would be necessary to change it. No matter whether the Electoral College changes or stays in place, however, the Electoral College has already left an indelible mark on some of the most consequential moments in American history, determining who was in power during the Sept. Modern elections have been known to get ugly, but the election of may be the most contentious race ever. When Rutherford B.
Hayes, the Republican governor of Ohio, took on New York Democrat Samuel Tilden, the claws came out; for example, rumors circulated that Tilden was single because he had syphilis. The election is also the only race in American history which the victor initially won both fewer electoral votes and fewer popular votes than his opponent.
However, the election was riddled with voter fraud and suppression in the post-Civil War south. After the election, the validity of the votes in Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina and Oregon was challenged.
Congress ultimately came up with a special commission composed of 15 congressmen and Supreme Court Justices, who were tasked with devising a solution. In exchange for Democrats allowing Hayes the White House victory, Republicans agreed to remove all federal troops from the south, leaving Democrats free to reclaim control of the region and local governments to subjugate African Americans who had so recently been freed from slavery.
Public attention was drawn to the practice after an Indiana newspaper published a letter , apparently written by a Republican National Committee official, which instructed party workers on how to handle floaters. Trump's allies also might point to the closeness of the election, despite numerous polls pointing to Biden holding a strong lead, coupled with the president making gains in a number of demographics, as reason why he could still be competitive as a presidential contender in Sam Nunberg, who was a strategist on Trump's campaign, told the New York Times, "President Trump will remain a hero within the Republican electorate.
The winner of the Republican presidential primary will either be President Trump or the candidate who most closely resembles him. According to Edison Research's exit poll, Trump's vote share went up with Black men and women, Latino men and women and white women. Latino voters helped Trump win Florida. But despite more people voting for Trump in than Obama in , he still is almost certain to lose the popular vote for the second election in a row. In , Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million but still lost to Trump in the Electoral College.
Here's how that can happen: The U. To win a modern presidential election, a candidate needs to capture of the total electoral votes. States are allotted electoral votes based on the number of representatives they have in the House plus their two senators.
Electors are apportioned according to the population of each state, but even the least populous states are constitutionally guaranteed a minimum of three electors one representative and two senators.
This guaranteed minimum means that states with smaller populations end up having greater representation in the Electoral College per capita. Wyoming, for example, has one House representative for all of its roughly , residents. California, a much more populous state, has 53 representatives in the House, but each of those congressmen and women represent more than , Californians. Since most states 48 plus Washington, D. But if their opponent wins a bunch of smaller states by tight margins, he or she could still win the Electoral College.
Take a look at all five times a president won the White House while losing the popular vote. John Quincy Adams, 6th president of the United States. This is the first of two occasions when the man ultimately elected president first lost both the popular vote and the electoral vote.
When the votes were tallied, Andrew Jackson won a plurality of both the popular vote and the Electoral College. But to win the presidency, you need more than a plurality the most electoral votes , you need a majority more than half , and Jackson was 32 electoral votes shy of the mark.
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