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Can we stop talking about the popular vote as if it means anything

 
 
 
PyramidHead

PyramidHead

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The popular vote is a tally of the number of votes cast by people while they voted for electors in the electoral college. For that reason, it's useless as a metric for determining public opinion; many conservatives in California and liberals in Kentucky rationally decided their votes wouldn't make a difference to the electoral college outcome of their states, so they didn't bother voting, which means they weren't counted in the popular vote. So, it's pointless and not really accurate to say "if we just went by the popular vote, Gore would have beaten Bush", because if that were the case, everybody would know their vote counted just as much as the next person, and the voting demographics would thus be totally different from what they actually were in 2000. We can't use the popular vote, as measured in an election that is decided based on the electoral college, to make any kind of determinations about what the population as a whole wants. Clinton's historic lead in the popular vote doesn't mean most of the country wants her to be President, it means that the current electoral system has resulted in a historically high number of superfluous votes. It's an argument about changing the system, not about favoring one candidate over another.
 
Popular vote would most certainly be screamed about by Trump supporters had he lost the EC, but won the popular vote (which was impossible... at least I was right on the Clinton call for popular vote regardless of EC outcome).

The popular vote matters as far as a mandate for how hard an administration can push. Granted, mandates for Republicans are assumed regardless how they win or even lose.

It does matter. Clinton won the popular vote by a larger margin than won by in 1880, 1884, 1960, and 1968, where the candidate also won the EC. She also bested popular vote tallies from 1888 (likely) and 2000 where the winner of the popular vote lost the EC. Trump also won with the fewest votes since 2000.

This all indicates small mandate. Not that the Republicans believe in such things for themselves.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
Popular vote would most certainly be screamed about by Trump supporters had he lost the EC, but won the popular vote (which was impossible... at least I was right on the Clinton call for popular vote regardless of EC outcome).

The popular vote matters as far as a mandate for how hard an administration can push. Granted, mandates for Republicans are assumed regardless how they win or even lose.

It does matter. Clinton won the popular vote by a larger margin than won by in 1880, 1884, 1960, and 1968, where the candidate also won the EC.
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Since she didn't win the EC this time, that equally means Trump won the EC by a larger margin than was won in those years by the victors.

She also bested popular vote tallies from 1888 (likely) and 2000 where the winner of the popular vote lost the EC. Trump also won with the fewest votes since 2000.

This all indicates small mandate. Not that the Republicans believe in such things for themselves.
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I don't know, I'm seeing less of an indication of a mandate and more of an argument for a better way to choose who becomes President. If all the people who didn't vote for either candidate because the EC nullifies their contribution had voted, that would be a much better yardstick for policy, and there's no way to know if that would have been a Clinton mandate or a Trump one because they didn't vote. It's not nothing, I guess, but it's really not much of something.
 
PyramidHead said:
I don't know, I'm seeing less of an indication of a mandate and more of an argument for a better way to choose who becomes President. If all the people who didn't vote for either candidate because the EC nullifies their contribution had voted, that would be a much better yardstick for policy, and there's no way to know if that would have been a Clinton mandate or a Trump one because they didn't vote. It's not nothing, I guess, but it's really not much of something.
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That argument is bunk because on Election Day, it isn't just the President people are voting for.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
PyramidHead said:
I don't know, I'm seeing less of an indication of a mandate and more of an argument for a better way to choose who becomes President. If all the people who didn't vote for either candidate because the EC nullifies their contribution had voted, that would be a much better yardstick for policy, and there's no way to know if that would have been a Clinton mandate or a Trump one because they didn't vote. It's not nothing, I guess, but it's really not much of something.
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That argument is bunk because on Election Day, it isn't just the President people are voting for.
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I'd imagine the proportion of voters who vote in a Presidential election just to have a say in the Congressional races is probably pretty low. I don't actually know the popular vote turnout for the Congressional races that were the most crucial in flipping the Senate. Gerrymandering is the state-level version of the electoral college in its effect on convincing voters their voice doesn't matter as much, so I think it's still valid to point out that the popular vote was decided by people to whom the gerrymandered system gave the green light, so to speak.
 
I personally know several Republicans who did not vote because they knew that Hillary would take Illinois. Of course they could have kept their man, Mark Kirk, in the Senate if they had showed up. Thank the FSM they didn't, and now Tammy Duckworth will be taking his seat. Unfortunately my house district still kept Bost as our representative, and I have no idea how that idiot continues to win elections.

Getting back on track, the popular vote would mean something if we changed the rules and went with the popular vote. From that perspective, we should continue to talk about the popular vote because it can mean something.
 
Since the popular vote doesn't matter, why not leave out all these months of boredom for the world, and just have an electoral college that is like your judiciary, chosen by your masters to do their bidding. If I were a betting man, I'd be prepared to put a few bob on Trump doing this anyway - you Third World countries do have bosses like that.
 
iolo said:
Since the popular vote doesn't matter, why not leave out all these months of boredom for the world, and just have an electoral college that is like your judiciary, chosen by your masters to do their bidding. If I were a betting man, I'd be prepared to put a few bob on Trump doing this anyway - you Third World countries do have bosses like that.
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The state legislatures can decide to do this, not Trump.
 
dismal said:
iolo said:
Since the popular vote doesn't matter, why not leave out all these months of boredom for the world, and just have an electoral college that is like your judiciary, chosen by your masters to do their bidding. If I were a betting man, I'd be prepared to put a few bob on Trump doing this anyway - you Third World countries do have bosses like that.
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The state legislatures can decide to do this, not Trump.
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And I was gonna say, the electors can vote however they want anyway, even though in practice they always go with the constituency.
 
Victory in popular vote up to 1.67 million (1.3%). Looks like 2 million is possible.
 
iolo said:
Since the popular vote doesn't matter, why not leave out all these months of boredom for the world, and just have an electoral college that is like your judiciary, chosen by your masters to do their bidding. If I were a betting man, I'd be prepared to put a few bob on Trump doing this anyway - you Third World countries do have bosses like that.
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Because the vote is so the people of the State can tell their State's electors how they want them to vote. The popular vote within the State does matter to the State's electors.
 
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