"Popular" Republicans have always won the electoral vote.
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  "Popular" Republicans have always won the electoral vote.
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Author Topic: "Popular" Republicans have always won the electoral vote.  (Read 3774 times)
°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
Junior Chimp
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« on: July 15, 2014, 01:05:01 PM »

The only point of the map below is that in order
for a candidate to win the popular vote and lose the
electoral vote it would be a very close election.

This map is a victory for the Democrats in 2016 or 2020
but would be a victory for Republicans thereafter.

The whole point of this thread is that the Republican
candidates who win the popular vote have *always*
won the electoral college. (I am pretty certain this is true,
correct me if it isn't)
I think this has a lot
to do with why many of them have been reluctant to
abolish it.

I am not convinced that the electoral college should be
abolished. There is a downside, as many have pointed out,
that Democrats would focus on large cities and ignore
the rest of the country. This may be true and if
it is it isn't necessarily a good thing.
On the other hand there are good arguments to abolish it
(or at least change it radically), as well...


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cbannon5
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« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2014, 02:00:47 PM »

The only point of the map below is that in order
for a candidate to win the popular vote and lose the
electoral vote it would be a very close election.

This map is a victory for the Democrats in 2016 or 2020
but would be a victory for Republicans thereafter.

The whole point of this thread is that the Republican
candidates who win the popular vote have *always*
won the electoral college. (I am pretty certain this is true,
correct me if it isn't)
I think this has a lot
to do with why many of them have been reluctant to
abolish it.

I am not convinced that the electoral college should be
abolished. There is a downside, as many have pointed out,
that Democrats would focus on large cities and ignore
the rest of the country. This may be true and if
it is it isn't necessarily a good thing.
On the other hand there are good arguments to abolish it
(or at least change it radically), as well...




Democrats, nor Republicans for that matter, could not solely focus on large cities under the NPV any more than commercial advertisers could focus only on large cities. The total population of America's 50 biggest cities (in terms of population) represent only 15% of the US population.  That means 85% of the US population lives in places with a population of less than 365k.  Too focus solely on the urban electorate would get the Democrats destroyed. 
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2014, 07:02:59 PM »

Do gubernatorial elections, or every other type of election, focus only on large cities? Certainly not. Why would Presidential elections be otherwise? We talk of a national popular vote as if it's some weird untested idea with no precedent, but there's no good reason to think it would be much different from every other election ever.
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dmmidmi
dmwestmi
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« Reply #3 on: July 16, 2014, 10:13:19 AM »

I am not convinced that the electoral college should be
abolished. There is a downside, as many have pointed out,
that Democrats would focus on large cities and ignore
the rest of the country.
This may be true and if
it is it isn't necessarily a good thing.
On the other hand there are good arguments to abolish it
(or at least change it radically), as well...




If this is really the argument, I never want to hear Republicans spew another argument against programs that aim to benefit underrepresented minorities (affirmative action, etc.) ever again. Because that's what the Electoral College currently represents.
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #4 on: July 16, 2014, 10:30:33 AM »

I could rephrase:

"More on big cities and less on sparse populations"
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dmmidmi
dmwestmi
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« Reply #5 on: July 16, 2014, 02:05:50 PM »

I could rephrase:

"More on big cities and less on sparse populations"

That doesn't change the original argument.

The spirit of the argument is this: should the electoral college be abolished, the winner of each election would largely be chosen by people who live in metropolitan areas and inner cities, because there are more people there. The interests of people who live in rural and frontier areas would be lost, because there are fewer of them.

Hence, the system is intended to insure that the interests of a minority (people who live in rural and frontier areas) aren't drowned out, because so many people live in cities and suburbs.

It is a way of leveling the playing field, to protect a minority population.

See where I'm going with this?
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #6 on: July 19, 2014, 10:10:49 AM »

I could rephrase:

"More on big cities and less on sparse populations"

That doesn't change the original argument.

The spirit of the argument is this: should the electoral college be abolished, the winner of each election would largely be chosen by people who live in metropolitan areas and inner cities, because there are more people there. The interests of people who live in rural and frontier areas would be lost, because there are fewer of them.

Hence, the system is intended to insure that the interests of a minority (people who live in rural and frontier areas) aren't drowned out, because so many people live in cities and suburbs.

It is a way of leveling the playing field, to protect a minority population.

See where I'm going with this?

Yes. The Senate is based on a similar argument, as well.
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #7 on: July 19, 2014, 10:18:02 AM »

I would point out that back in the 18th century representations were much more proportional
than they are now. California and Wyoming both have two Senate seats. This kind of situation
was very different in the 18th century. Most states were closer to average although obviously not nearly the same size in population. I am not a big advocate for changing the electoral college, but it might be a good idea. The biggest problem with the current situation is that at least 80% of the states are seen as safe and the voters in those states aren't highly motivated to vote in a presidential election.

Here is a fairly obvious example of what a close election could look like:

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Antonio the Sixth
Antonio V
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« Reply #8 on: July 20, 2014, 01:52:17 AM »

Here's a useful note for everyone to try and remember.

There is no point making inferences based on past elections (especially when testing a case so specific as PV/EV disconnect, which happened only 3 times over 224 years) because the sample is too small.
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