People who want to abolish the electoral college, currently mostly Democrats, typically say things like this: “If the 2016 election had been decided by popular vote, then it follows that Hillary Clinton would now be president.” This assertion is blatantly false. The people who make this claim appeal to the fact that Clinton got more votes—a bigger popular vote—than Trump in 2016. But, of course, the conclusion most certainly does not follow! There’s all the difference in the world between “winning the popular vote” in a system where no one who matters gives a flying freak about the popular vote, and winning the popular vote in a system where the popular vote is the all-important decider.
If the 2016 election had been decided by popular vote, then the popular vote would not have been the same as it was in the actual election. Many people would have voted differently than they did. Many people would have been caught up in the campaign who in fact ignored it almost completely, while voters in certain counties, who in the actual election became centers of attention, would have gone unnoticed.
The campaign would have been, in some conspicuous ways, unrecognizable compared with what actually occurred: absolutely no one, for instance, would have cared who “won” Florida or Pennsylvania, a virtually meaningless concept under a popular-vote-decided system. A few thousand more or less Republican or Democratic votes in California, which would have counted for absolutely nothing in the actual 2016 election, would have been exactly as important as a few thousand more or less Republican or Democratic votes in Michigan.
Or, as an economist would put it, change the incentives and you change the outcomes.
These three paragraphs quoted above are from David Ramsay Steele, “Winning the Popular Vote,” The London Libertarian, June 30, 2019.
Another great paragraph:
This is why it’s misleading to talk about “winning” or “losing” the popular vote under a system of rules where everyone trying to win views the popular vote as irrelevant to the capture of power. It’s like saying that someone who lost a game of chess by being checkmated “won” the piece-taking score because he captured more pieces than his opponent. This is just not the way chess games are scored. And if it were the way chess games were scored, then both players would have played very differently, and very likely the same player would have won (because skill in one game is transferable to skill in a somewhat similar game).
This paragraph surprised me:
Before the election, many conventional experts scoffed at Trump’s decision to campaign so heavily in the rust belt. Couldn’t this amateur, this dolt, see that he had no chance in those states? But Trump had superior intel (Cambridge Analytica) and superior strategic vision. He had been pondering, developing, and honing his working-class, protectionist, America-first electoral strategy for over thirty years. Trump did not win because Hillary was “a bad candidate,” as so many people now like to intone. Her “badness” corresponds with the conventional wisdom of all the accredited cognoscenti before the election, who all confidently expected her to win. Trump won because he was an extraordinarily capable candidate. He out-generaled the highly competent yet conventionally-minded staff of Hillary Clinton. Trump beat Clinton by better science and deeper thought.
There’s something to that. I’m not totally convinced. I said during the election that both Hillary and Donald had the ideal candidate to run against. I’m less sure of that now, and David Ramsay Steele’s paragraph above is making me less sure.
The whole thing is well worth reading.
HT2 Mark Brady.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Jul 3 2019 at 8:23am
I just read the blog post and it is wrong on so many counts. I don’t want to spend too many electrons of Internet ether in commenting but only will raise a couple of points. One can more easily gauge party affiliation by looking at total voting from House of Representatives and by this measure there are more Democratic than Republican votes. Big states tend to dwarf the vote counts in smaller states and one can see the tightening of Republican margins in Florida and Texas in 2018 which would bode poorly for Mr. Steele’s thesis.
Clinton’s candidacy was in peril from the beginning as the party elites pretty much shutdown any competition other than Senator Sanders whose insurgent campaign pointed out the frailties. It is likely that anyone of the major Republican candidates would have done as well or better than Trump in the election based on various metrics that political scientists have developed to look at outcomes (I was a poli-sci minor in college and still keep up with the literature). Trump’s populist and xenophobic campaign came at just the right moment against a candidate who was very weak.
Had VP Biden been the Democrat’s standard bearer we would not be having this conversation.
Alan Goldhammer
Jul 3 2019 at 8:39am
I read this piece by NYT commentator Thomas Edsall after I posted. It encapsulates a number of the political science references that I have recently read and highlights, at least for me, what the key strategy was in 2016 and will be in 2020.
Jon Murphy
Jul 3 2019 at 8:57am
I think you will have to spill more digital ink because it’s not clear to me why you think this bodes poorly for Steele’s thesis, which is that the candidates would have behaved differently under a different set of rules. Indeed, the House elections may support his thesis given that the House is elected by districts; a Republican wouldn’t necessarily campaign in deep blue MA 7th (which includes Boston). he might have a better shot at MA 1st (the far West, which is relatively redder). But if the entire system were At-Large and the top 9 vote-getters would be sent to Congress, he would spend time in Boston.
JFA
Jul 3 2019 at 10:04am
One way to look at this is to compare Senate results with House results (i.e. # of votes for the Senator of one party vs. # of votes for all the party’s House candidates). Senators are elected statewide while House reps are district level, so if Steele’s argument is more than just theoretical, we should see big differences in vote counts. If we don’t see big differences in vote counts, then Steele’s argument is just “hey here’s something that probably doesn’t matter but those who don’t remain agnostic (i.e. Democrats) are wrong.”
I only put in the time for Texas. The total number of votes for Ted Cruz (Republican) was 4,260,553. The total votes for Republican House candidates was 4,105,359. The numbers for Democrats Senate and House were 4,045,632 and 3,852,752. These numbers are affected by 4 districts not even fielding a Republican candidate and the Dems facing more 3rd party candidates (usually Libertarian). We can see some slight differences, but my guess is that these are not due to how the statewide candidates campaigned relative to the district level candidates. More analysis would be needed to say for sure, but my guess is that Steele is making voters thought processes a bit too complicated.
Jon Murphy
Jul 3 2019 at 10:21am
I don’t think this is a good counterexample:
The initial numbers hold up to Steele’s thesis: the statewide Dems had more votes than the district Dems. Furthermore, the results of the election stayed the same (the two parts of his thesis: 1) that the voting patterns would likely change and 2) that the outcome would likely be the same).
Further, I do not see this as a voter issue but a candidate issue. Steele is discussing the behavior of candidates, not necessarily voters (though voters are reacting to that behavior).
robc
Jul 3 2019 at 2:20pm
If all states used the ME/NE rule (EC votes distributed to district winners, with 2 EC votes going to statewide winner), Trump would have still won, but with less EC votes than he actually got.
This is a change to the current Electoral College that I actually favor, but it would take an amendment to get the big states to adopt it.
My reason for favoring the change is it reduces the potential damage due to voter irregularities. Localized cheating can’t throw the whole state (or whole election, in case of a popular vote), it can affect 3 EC votes at most.
Johnson85
Jul 3 2019 at 3:59pm
If you assume that we switched from an electoral college system to popular vote system after the primaries, you’re probably right. The cake was baked at that point .
If you assume we switched from an electoral college system at say the prior midterms, it’s less clear you’re right. I’m not sure primary voters are that strategic and would change their preferences based on their view of electability in the general, but I think you would have seen very different positioning of the primary candidates, who do have to at least consider how their primary campaigning might impact their chances in the general.
But certainly if we had one presidential election decided by the popular vote, you’d see a realignment of politicians and their strategies to reflect the new political reality.
Jon Murphy
Jul 3 2019 at 9:03am
Good stuff. I’ve tried making this point to friends before with no luck. I did it via sports metaphor: if baseball games were determined by the number of hits rather than the number of runs, you’d see fewer power hitters and guys would spend a lot more time in the film room trying to study pitchers rather than the weight room trying to gain muscle (also, Moneyball-style strategy would become even more important). Perhaps I should try using Steele’s argument.
Although I am not convinced wholly about his claim that Trump was the better strategizer and that Hilliary wasn’t a poor candidate. He certainly had a good strategy going after Democratic strongholds, but the mere fact Clinton did not respond to that behavior suggests to me that she was a poor candidate. A good general will attack his enemy’s supply chain. A poor general will do nothing, insisting things are well protected even as the oil refineries burn.
David Henderson
Jul 3 2019 at 11:14am
Good point. I make the same point with my favorite spectator sport, NBA basketball. In the best of 7 playoffs, if a team is winning by 10 points or more with 45 seconds left, it doesn’t try hard to score or to prevent the other team from scoring. It’s “Red Auerbach, light your cigar” time.
But if total points over the best of 7 series were what counted, both teams would be playing hard to the end.
robc
Jul 3 2019 at 9:25am
Clinton got 48.02% of the popular vote, so the election would have been decided by the House of Representatives.
I assume just because we would switch from EC to actual votes, we still wouldn’t allow a plurality to determine the election. Result stays the same, Trump is elected.
robc
Jul 3 2019 at 9:28am
Trump had Cambridge Analytica, but Hillary had Bill Clinton. Apparently Bill is as good at this stuff as that entire organization, because he pointed out to her team her weakness and how she needed to campaign hard in the Rust Belt.
I couldn’t stand Bill Clinton in 1992 and can’t today, but the guy knows how to win an election. If he gives advice, listen to it.
TMC
Jul 3 2019 at 9:33am
That’s the funny thing about the election. In our current system, there is no need to run up the score in states where you have a lock. Trump should not spend an inordinate time in Texas and Hillary should not spend an inordinate amount of time in California.
But she did. She spent too much time in states she had known she’d win, and too little in states that were closer to the bubble. Some of it was hubris on Clinton’s part, but it’s not like she lost by one state. Trump campaigned like the electoral count mattered, and Clinton campaigned like the popular vote mattered.
Alan Goldhammer
Jul 3 2019 at 11:32am
Clinton spent time in California fundraising. Big Democratic donors are there and that’s the reason for the visits plain and simple.
TMC
Jul 3 2019 at 3:52pm
Yes, ever a Clinton.
She had 2x the money Trump did and still preferred to fundraise rather than visit some key states.
Jackson Mejia
Jul 3 2019 at 10:44am
It’s worth noting that a shift from our electoral system to a popular vote changes the calculus for voters as well as politicians. Red voters in blue states tend to stay home more than they would in a popular vote system and the same goes for blue voters in red states. It is an empirical question as to whether they would cancel each other out, but I doubt it.
David Henderson
Jul 3 2019 at 11:10am
It is worth noting, which is why David Ramsay Steele noted it.
Michael Byrnes
Jul 3 2019 at 11:58am
I think the author of the piece goes too far when he shifts from saying that claims that the outcome would have been different under a popular vote standard are wrong (true) to making the argument that candidates who win under one system would also win under a different system.
Some candidate are going to have a base of support that may work better under one set of rules than another. Given the strange look of the 2016 election (Trump winning the 3 decisive states by razor thin margins), I’m skeptical of the assumption that he culd adapt successfully to any set of rules. The Golden State Warriors’ recent run of NBA dminance is absolutely tailored to the NBA rules, particularly the rule about which shots count for 3 point. But it would be silly to suggest that if there were no 3-point shot, the Warriors would be equally likely to find a different way to exploit the rules. Most likely, if the 3 had been banned in 2015, there would be no Warrior dynasty.
I think we should have a popular vote system for a couple of reasons:
First, the reason the electoral college is accepted at all is because, for most elections, it is usually a reasonable predictor of who won the popular vote. If people accepted the electoral college on its own terms, there wouldn’t be such an outcry over popular vote/electoral college discrepancies.
Second, I think it is idiotic that we essentially decide our elections based on the preferences of a very small subset of voters who happen to be from a subset of swing states. California, New York, Alabama, Utah, etc, are all basically predetermined, so the electoral battles are fought in a relative few states that have the potential to go either way.
Third, state by state winner-take-all essentially devalues the voters of the losing side. California Republicans, South Dakota Democrats. There are a lot of those people, but none of them have any real say in who gets to be President.
I don’t think strategy in a popular vote system is necessarily a foregone conclusion. Is the right move in such a system to focus on areas of strength or areas of weakness? So many parts of the country are basically a de facto one-party system. It would be good to give the typically losing parties in various regions a reason to get in there and compete for votes.
Scott Sumner
Jul 3 2019 at 1:03pm
I often say “If we elected Presidents based on popular votes, then Hillary would have won.” This is very likely true, due to the 2.9 million vote margin.
You quote Steele as saying:
“People who want to abolish the electoral college, currently mostly Democrats, typically say things like this: “If the 2016 election had been decided by popular vote, then it follows that Hillary Clinton would now be president.” This assertion is blatantly false.”
Yes it’s false, but people don’t typically say things like that, they typically say things like what I said above. People don’t typically say “it follows” in everyday speech.
In everyday speech, when making statements about politics or economics or related fields, people also don’t generally qualify their assertions with probability values, unless they are not highly confident in their view. I am very confident that Hillary would have won either way.
I am sympathetic to Steele’s claim that Trump was a much more talented politician than most experts assumed. I thought he would lose the election.
Slightly off topic: It’s probably not wise for Trump supporters who favor the electoral college to claim he would have won either way. (I see this sometimes.) They should claim he would have lost a popular vote election, and that this is one reason the Electoral College is so useful. By claiming he would have won either way they seem defensive, playing into the hands of those who oppose the institution. I’m not saying one can’t rationally hold both views, just that it’s not necessarily the best way to gain support. Fairly or unfairly, most people assume that other people engage in motivated reasoning, and hence that Steele’s argument is viewed as (implicitly) being slightly embarrassed about the loss in the popular vote.
roc
Jul 3 2019 at 2:16pm
That is very likely is false, because, as I pointed out up a few comments, the House would have probably still elected Trump.
Switching from EC to Popular vote doesn’t change the majority requirement.
Scott Sumner
Jul 4 2019 at 9:07pm
If we had the president picked by popular vote, then obviously they would not be picked by the House. I thought that was obvious. I was considering a completely different system from what’s in the Constitution. Either a plurality, or a run-off when no majority.
Vic Volpe
Jul 3 2019 at 4:35pm
This whole argument is a red herring that dodges the real argument of the expression of the popular will and the political tactics of our current president.
I’ll grant you that some of the political Left have difficulty accepting the results of the election and therefore propose to abolish the Electoral College. I am not one of those; and, while I have no strong opinions one way or the other concerning the Electoral College system, I have no problems keeping it, even if if minority candidates win the presidential election.
The real issue is what is the popular will. We have the structure of a constitutional republic governed by a democratic process, with the popular will being expressed indirectly through a federal system. And we have a minority president who acts as if because he got elected he has a mandate to do whatever he wants. His political tacticss have been to govern soley from his base of support without trying to expand it on the political sprectrum, but instead [I would guess] trying to deepen his support by attempting to gather more people to his cause who normally do not come out to vote (40% to 50%).
As a result of President Trump’s political tactics he has been met with considerable opposition, especially in states with larger populations where his opposition has large majorities. We just had an election 2018 for the House seats where Democrats have picked up an overwhelming majority; unlike the Senate races 2018 which were in approximately one-third of the states, the House races where in every congressional district in the nation, and had one of the highest turnouts in one-hundred years.
So, to put the above in context, when I read Victor Davis Hanson (or Newt Gingrich) after the election explaining Trump in terms of what the people wanted, I think you have to keep in mind the popular vote as to why there is so much opposition to our current president.
David Henderson
Jul 3 2019 at 7:04pm
You’re trying to read way more into it than is there. I’m pretty sure, based on his other work, that Steele is not pro-Trump. He’s addressing the argument he’s claiming to address. I would bet that Steele, like me and like co-blogger Pierre Lemieux, thinks there is no such thing as the popular will.
Vic Volpe
Jul 3 2019 at 8:37pm
Not with standing the views of Libertarians, saying there is no such thing as a popular will (aka popular sovereignty) is quite a statement for our federal system characterized by elections at national, state, and local levels to determine how we are governed; not to mention the many civic organizations and businesses that utilize a similar device (a show of hands) as well as our courts.
David Henderson
Jul 4 2019 at 7:56am
Vic, It’s true that libertarians often make this point, but it’s not a libertarian point per se. The idea that there is no such thing as the popular will is a technical economic point. It’s part of what won the Nobel Prize for Kenneth Arrow, an economist whom no one would accuse of being a libertarian.
Vic Volpe
Jul 4 2019 at 10:57am
On this day when we celebrate the Declaration of Independence I think the two of you should read the Constiitution which formed our government, by structure and process.; and the basic process is through some type of election process, either by direct elections or indirectly through electors. As we expanded beyond the original states notions of popular sovereignty took hold. One way or the other is how representation is determined. Representation is expressed by a majority, a simple majority in many cases, a super major in others; it is not unanimity. The fact that some of the people are outvoted in issues does not dissolve the union or the way it goes about its business, a union they voluntary gave their consent to.
Jon Murphy
Jul 4 2019 at 1:14pm
Vic-
Popular sovereignty does not equate to popular will. That is made expressly clear in the Declaration, the structure of the Constitution (especially the Preamble), and the writings of the Founders and many other liberals whom they based their work off of. That people rule, that government serves to protect rights and by the common consent of the governed, implies nothing about the existence of a “popular will.”
Jon Murphy
Jul 4 2019 at 9:02am
Vic-
Two other quick points:
The mere existence of an election does not imply a belief in a popular will. It is merely a method of choosing among alternatives in a collective-choice problem. It is no more a symbol of a popular will than a dictatorship is.
The idea of Condorcet’s Paradox that Prof. Henderson discusses pre-dates the widespread adoption of the phrase “will of the people” or “popular will.” Condorcet discovered the paradox in the late 18th Century, while “will of the people” and “popular will” did not enter the common lexicon until the late 19th Century. It seems to me that the concept of “popular will” came about as a way to analogize the idea of the will of the sovereign onto a democracy, perhaps as a popular fiction (or a “noble lie”) to support the necessary mythologies of democracy, although I have no hard evidence for this claim; just my interpretation of the timing and language.
It might also be worth noting that the idea that an election represents a popular will is something of the fallacy of composition; we cannot necessarily reach any conclusions about the desires of “society” with anything less than a unanimous vote, even if we assume “society” is something that can possess a will.
Jon Murphy
Jul 4 2019 at 10:22am
I apologize for the formatting of my comment above. I was trying to do an enumerated list, but apparently, I am not as clever as I thought 🙂
My first point begins with “The mere existence of an election does not imply a belief in a popular will.
My second point begins with: “The idea of Condorcet’s Paradox that Prof. Henderson discusses pre-dates the widespread adoption of the phrase “will of the people” or “popular will.””
Miguel Madeira
Jul 4 2019 at 6:41am
If USA had a popular vote system like almost all countries who elect their president by popular vote, the election will had a second round between Hillary and Trump, and the final result would have depended of the people who have voted Stein, Johnson, McMullin, etc. in the first round.
Alan Goldhammer
Jul 4 2019 at 2:22pm
One can use rank choice voting and eliminate the need for a second round. I believe a Congressional seat in Maine was decided in just this manner in 2018 where a majority was not achieved in a multi-candidate race. This way one can vote for an independent party candidate to express contempt yet pick a mainstream candidate as the second choice. I’m doubtful President Trump would have been the second choice of Stein, Johnson, and McMullin supporters in the same way George W. Bush would not have been the second choice of Florida Ralph Nader voters in 2000.
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