Talk Elections

I heard someone on YouTube stating that if Trump had won the popular vote in 2016 while losing the electoral college, his supporters would have rioted and Republicans would have successfully pushed to abolish the EC.

Do you think this line of speculation would have been accurate?

[FYI: FiveThirtyEight's final forecast on Election Day 2016 indicated that there was a 0.5% chance of Trump losing the EC while winning the PV, so this scenario is certainly not out of the question, however far-fetched it may seem.]

Pretty much the only time this was a realistic possibility in recent memory was 2004. Kerry might well have won Ohio and the EV while losing the PV.

Assuming an uniform swing, didn't the EC mathematically favor Obama in both his runs? However, I agree that the possibility of it happening under current circumstances is tiny, negligible. I cannot see it happening right now.

In 2020, the only plausible way I can see it happening is if Trump gets huge swings among non-college whites but barely falls short in a few states, and Beto O'Rourke gets a decently large home state effect.

A heads-up to everyone:

The purpose of this thread is not to discuss the likelihood of my described scenario happening. It is to discuss the potential aftermath/fallout of such an event actually happening.

As such, I would like to hear others' opinions on how likely the fallout I described in my opening post (i.e. Republican voters rioting and Republicans pushing hard to abandon the electoral college, possibly succeeding in doing so).

Not possible. I’ve said this many times before. With Cali having 3-4m vote leads for Dems It’s hard for them to even win the popular vote in the first place. They need to cut down that lead in CA by at least half and make up for it by winning Texas in a landslide.

They would be screaming bloody murder.

I think a lot of people see the value of the EC.  There always has been the possibility of a candidate that would run exceptionally strongly in a geographic area, and running up a huge pile of votes.

A conservative may not want a president of New York, New Jersey, and New England, but how many liberals would want a President of the Bible Belt? 

I will note that there were times when Republicans ran up huge margins in California, and there was never a call to abolish the EC.

The EC can help moderate polarization. 

It also, as we saw in 2000 and 2016, makes the whole result potentially chaotically susceptible to comparatively tiny swings of opinion in a couple of small places. The “regional support” argument doesn’t work for Trump/against Clinton because WI/MI/PA were basically statistical ties.

The "small places" represent 8.5% of the population, and they really are not regionally together.  I certainly would not classify those states as Northeast or Midwest.

You’re being willfully obtuse.

No, that is my point.  You did not have regionalism in 2016.

Pointbeing, when the regionalism argument doesn’t apply, you’ve got cases like 2016 and 2000 where the electoral college serves only to turn an election into a coin flip for no good reason.

No, because if there was not an electoral college, candidates would try to maximize their votes in their strongholds.  Hillary Clinton would not have to even try to appeal to people in Pennsylvania; she would be in California trying to maximize her vote their.  She would not need to try to appeal to a broader segment of the country. 

We complain about polarization now,but this would knock it into overdrive.   

What? Winning a PV majority is literally appealing to a broader segment of the country. It's inherent to the idea of a mathematical majority.

No it isn’t. Winning the PV is running up the score in sections where you are already ahead. The fact that Hillary won the PV despite the national precinct map being a sea of red proves this.

People elect the president, not land area.

The notion that candidates would merely contest places that have the densest populations and/or their strongest areas is nothing short of dense (pun intended).

Candidates would obviously compete in areas where the greatest value ($) per vote could be extracted (which, contrary to popular belief, isn't going to be in expensive California or New York media markets) and in areas where the greatest concentrations of elastic voters exist - which certainly is not going to be in Democratic strongholds. It'd result in candidates targeting media markets (and therefore voters) all over the country, including many places that get zero attention in current presidential campaigns.

It'd be more likely that Democrats would compete nowhere, given that the country has wanted us in 6 out of the past 7 presidential elections, than to confine ourselves to the densest urban areas in a few states.

The real reason the GOP hates the idea of the popular vote is because it would intensify the prevailing national sentiment - but not in the way they describe.

They of course come up with their bogeyman claims to justify it, but the reality is: given the fact that non-white voters are far less elastic than white voters, Democrats would constantly be on offense, able to leave Blue America on auto-pilot while targeting vast swathes of Red/White America in order to improve performance, while the GOP would be forced to fight to gin up turnout on their home turf at the same time that Democrats are persuading and mobilizing in their neighborhoods.

In short, they wouldn't be able to win - because the country already doesn't want them in the White House - and so they're forced to cling to the system that disenfranchises the will of the voters. Otherwise, the outcomes would be even more lopsided than they are in the PV in the modern era.

If this happens in 2016, I see Trump making a whole lot of fuss about it, maybe to the point where he refuses to concede or gives a half-concession (though he doesn’t seem to be too petty when it comes to congratulating Dems on winning the House, so who knows). Abolishing the electoral college won’t become part of the Republican platform at first. Establishment types like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnel will probably shrug of the loss as it lets them get revenge in other elections, constitutionalist types won’t want any amendments, Western states won’t want to give up their ‘power,’ and swing states like being catered to. Even if Trump continues to tweet about it for the next four years, Republicans will shrug him off and mostly forget about him.

A constitutional amendment could be fast-tracked if nobody wins the EC and the battle gets thrown to Congress. Nobody likes Congress. Kasich vs pissed off Trump-type vs HRC 2020?

However, if Dems win EC but no PV happens a few more times Rep voters are going to get angry about it, maybe sign the NPVIC (which is now signed by important Dem states). Partisan bipartisanship?

One problem is bipartisan support is very tricky because no side will want to delegitimize their president who won the EC but not PV.

If that were to happen, the Dems would immediately refuse to abolish the EC. And now both sides can't complain because both have used it to their advantage. But Trump will still complain and say he would've won if illegal aliens didn't vote twice.

Nothing would change

I don't know about his supporters rioting but they definitely would have successfully pushed to end the EC provided they accepted the legitimacy of Clinton's win. Despite what it may seem most Democrats see that the EC is unfair on its merits and would agree to end it even if they benefited from it in one election.

THIS!

Also, I think you'd see campaigning in way more states. Right now they only campaign in a few key swing states, ignoring most everyone else. Under a PV, every vote in a safe or purple state regardless would be just as valuable. You'd see Dems and Republicans campaign in Alabama, Hawaii, & Kansas along with the usual suspects. Turnout would even out around the country I believe too; turnout right now is slightly higher in swing states than safe ones, and ones like Texas and New York in particular have much lower turnout compared to Ohio, Florida, and Iowa.

It did. Favored GOP (decisively) in '00, Dems in '04 and '12, GOP decisively in '16 again, and ambiguous in '08 due to relative closeness in disparity between the parties + large 7-point overall Obama margin, so it's not safe to assume uniform in 08. But probably Dem that year too, he performed about as expected in the EC but fell short of his national polling by a bit.

P.S. by decisively i don't mean a big difference, just that it "changed" the winner, of the election

i remember in 2012. there was talk that romney could win pv and lose ec, and every liberal talking head said "so what, that's the rules". and they are right that's the rules and united states are federation, maybe ec will be changed but never abolished!

I think the EC still stays, on a somewhat related note its somewhat funny that from 1996 to 2016 there have been 6 elections, in 4 of them the Dems had the EC advantage, the tipping point state was to the left of the PV ad in none of them, 1996, 2004, 2008, 2012 did it matter, but in the 2 elections where the GOP had the EC advantage, 2000 and 2016 it proved decisive.