Almost President

Here is a startling fact: Hillary won the popular vote in the 2008 Democratic Primary vs. Barack Obama.  She had 17,857,501 votes to Obama's 17,584,692 votes, a margin of over a quarter of a million votes.  She had 48% of the popular vote to Obama's 47.3%.  Not only that, she won in 7 of the 10 largest states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.  Obama only won Illinois (his home state), Georgia, and North Carolina.  In an electoral college contest, she wins 311 to 227 but Obama won the nomination with 2,272 delegates to Hillary's 1,978.  Of note, Hillary was in Bernie's position on Superdelegates, accumulating only 34% of them to Obama's 66%.  If that had reversed, she would have won the nomination.  So close.

 

It is an interesting coincidence that in the recent election, she again had 48% of the popular vote but she only won 3 of the 10 largest states: California, New York, and Illinois.  Those three states accounted for 45% of her electoral votes (104) and 25% of her popular votes.  By contrast, Trump's three big states - Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania - only accounted for 28% of his electoral votes (87) and 19% of his popular vote total.  Hillary won those 3 states by a margin of 6.9 million votes.  Trump won his three largest states by a margin of 964,382.

 

Hillary Clinton is likely to be the William Jennings Bryan of our time with a dash of Victoria Woodhull.  Bryan ran for president on 3 separate occasions (1896, 1900, and 1908), losing each time.  He was Secretary of State for Woodrow Wilson and served in Congress.  Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president.  She ran as the candidate of the Equal Rights Party with Frederick Douglass named as her VP candidate (a nomination he did not acknowledge).  She may even be compared to Al Smith, the Democratic nominee of 1928.  He was the first Catholic to receive the nomination but it wasn't until JFK that a Catholic was elected.  As first woman to be nominated, she will be referenced each time a woman is nominated and when one eventually wins the presidency.

 

While Bill's reputation will sink as the years progress (Only he and Andrew Johnson were impeached; can you name something else for which Johnson is remembered?), Hillary's reputation will rise.  The details of her campaign will fade and the fact that she was the first woman nominee for a major party will be what is most remembered.  Only the dedicated historians who focus on our era will have the mixed opinions of today.  For instance, Truman was very unpopular in his day but has risen in esteem as the years have passed.  By contrast, Grant was very popular but has dropped nearly to the bottom of presidential rankings since he left office in 1877.  History will be kinder to Hillary than the present has been.

Popular Vote Nightmare

According to this Politico graphic, Hillary won the popular vote by approximately 800,000 votes but Trump won convincingly with electoral votes.  This has happened several times in US history, most recently in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote (48.4% to 47.9%) but narrowly lost the electoral vote (271 to 266).  As I mentioned in a previous post, Hillary's margin in California (2.6 million votes) is more than triple the amount of her overall popular vote margin.  The margin in one state should determine who is president?  Let's game that out for a worst case scenario.

 

Using the numbers from the Politico graphic, let us assume that Candidate A wins all but two states by a margin of 100,000 votes each and that 3rd Parties drain away the same number of votes as they did this year.  Candidate A thus wins a narrow victory in a state like Texas (48.6% to 47.4%) but a tremendous landslide in a state like South Dakota (60.1% to 33.1%).  Candidate B spent all his time in California and Florida.  He won both states by the exact margin that Hillary won California (61.5% to 33.2%).  Using the Electoral College, Candidate A wins an electoral landslide of 454 to 84.  Using the popular vote, Candidate B wins with 60.3 million votes to 60 million votes.  Because California and Florida are two of the most populous states, Candidate B's margin of victory is more than 5 million votes in those two states.  The 100K margin in every other state and DC only adds up to 4.9 million votes.  In this worst case scenario, who do you think should win?

 

Here is something else of note.  Florida has a population of 20.3 million and cast 9.4 million votes.  California has a population of 39.1 million and cast 9.1 million votes.  Under a popular vote system, Florida had more of a say than a state that is nearly twice its size.  Florida voters provided 7.3% of the total votes while California only provided 7.1%.  Under the electoral college system, California represents 10.2% of the votes while Florida has 5.4%.

 

Clearly, the electoral college forces the presidential election to be national rather than regional and it balances out the states regardless of voter participation rates.

Popular Vote vs. Electoral College

There has been a push to move more toward a popular vote system for electing the president rather than the existing electoral college.  This proposal really came to life in the wake of the 2000 election where Al Gore got more votes but George W Bush had more electoral votes.  A number of states have agreed to allocate electoral votes based on the popular vote rather than winner-take-all.  This is a bad idea but the current system is a hard sell to the casual voter.  However, what if such a system had been in place for the last 100 years or so.  Here are the new results:

1912: Thanks to Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party, the Republican vote was split and no one won a majority of the popular vote, though Wilson had the plurality at 41.8%  Dividing the electoral votes on that basis, no one wins.  The House - run by the Democrats - select Woodrow Wilson as President.  However, the Senate - run by Republicans - chose Nicholas Butler (Taft's running mate) - as the new Vice President.

1916: Running for re-election, Woodrow Wilson failed to win a majority of votes but again had a plurality of 49.2%.  Fortunately, the House and Senate are both controlled by the Democrats and he is selected for his second term with a Democrat VP this time.

1948: Truman fails to win a majority of votes but does get a plurality of 49.6%.  However, both the House and the Senate are controlled by Republicans so Dewey really does win!

1960: JFK has a narrow lead (49.7% vs. 49.6%) over Nixon in the popular vote but didn't win a majority.  As such, the election goes to the Democrat-controlled House and Senate who select JFK and LBJ.

1968: Though Nixon emerged with a plurality of 43.4% of the vote, the Democratically-controlled House and Senate select Hubert Humphrey.

1992: Bill Clinton won a plurality of 43% and the Democrat Congress selects him and Al Gore as President and VP.

1996: Though Bill Clinton won a plurality of votes (49.2%), the Republican-controlled Congress select Bob Dole as President.

2000: Al Gore wins plurality of the votes (48.4%) but the Republican-controlled Congress selects George W. Bush as President.

In every other election, the winner also had more than 50% of the popular vote.  It should be noted that in 4 cases (1916, 1960, 1992, 2000) the results are unchanged though the person who "won" would have been harmed by having been selected by Congress.  Also, three out of four of these cases would have hurt the Democrats.  In the other four cases, the results change.  The Republicans would have benefited from 1916, 1948, and 1996.  Democrats would have benefited in 1968.  Of course, all of those flipped elections would have been deemed corrupt.

Looking at the history, it does seem strange that those most supportive of using the popular vote are the very people who would have done worse under it.