Over the last month or so I have been asked by many colleagues and friends my opinion about Donald Trump’s chances of becoming President of the United States and have realized that many europeans (and some americans) do not really understand the system.
In the first place I never dreamed Trump would get this far and still believe that his loyal followers only make up about 30% of Republican primary voters. The fact is that he did manage to defeat all of the other candidates and throw the Republican party into deep disarray!
Trump Ahead?
After the Republican convention last week in Cleveland, several polls actually have Trump a percentage point or two above Ms. Clinton and this is clearly alarming. Perhaps the only solace one can draw from this is that it is normal for candidates to go up in the polls after their parties national conventions. The phenomena is called a “convention bounce” and even has an entry in wikipedia!
The good news is that it is almost impossible for him to beat Ms. Clinton in the general election and the reason has everything to do with the way the american presidential system works. The most important idea is that the election is not decided on the basis of who receives the most votes across the country.
If that were the case, then AL Gore would have been the 43rd president of the United States as he did receive 543,895 more votes than Bush if you add up all of the states in the Union.
The U.S. election, however, is decided by what are called electoral votes and Bush did achieve a narrow victory of 271 to 266 in what is called the electoral college. All of this dates back to the founding of the country when we did not have modern communications and the different states literally sent small delegations of “electors” to the capital to vote. Each state is awarded a number of such electors based on its population and whoever has a majority at the state level wins all of that states electoral votes.
Much has been made of the fact that Gore lost the state of Florida to Bush with its 25 electoral votes and lost by only 537 votes with a number of irregularities having been reported in the vote! A victory in Florida or his home state of Tennessee would have given the election to Gore.
While of course a direct election could be held in the Unites States today, the same system is still in place and will decide the Clinton Trump vote on November 8th.
Red States, Blue States, and Swing States
The two maps below show how the 2012 election between Barak Obama and Mitt Romney played out in terms of the electoral college system. The first map is geographic and the second one redraws the states according to their number of electoral college votes.
If you were to look at a number of past elections and do an analysis of which states voted Democratic or Republican you would see a very clear pattern of some states, such as Massachusetts which always vote for a Democratic and others, such as Texas, which always vote Republican. Remarkable elections like that of Ronald Reagan in 1980 occur once in a while in which the whole country jumps one way or another but these are historically quite rare and most states are normally blue or red.
The most interesting are what are called Swing States and they are the ones that decide american elections. Since 1964, for example, there have been 13 Presidential elections and Ohio has gone Republican 7 times and Democratic 6. The web site, Real Clear Politics, uses historical data and polling to make their own electoral map for 2016 and currently have Mrs Clinton in the lead with 13 states in the toss up camp.
These states include Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Mrs Clinton’s choice of Tim Kaine as her running mate is clearly motivated by a desire to secure Virginia.
Tough for Trump
While this is a crazy election year, it is hard to imagine Trump winning in Virginia after the Kaine pick and even harder to imagine him winning in Ohio given the open hostility of Republican Governor John Kasich. No Republican has ever won the presidency in modern times without winning in Ohio.
What is also clear is that while the system may seem a bit strange, every vote does count and especially those in swing states. A sentence normally attributed to Edmund Burke is that “All that is necessary for the forces of evil to succeed/triumph is for enough good men to do nothing” and the only way Trump can get enough electoral college votes together to win is if enough people stay home and let him win.
The danger for Mrs Clinton is that by picking a moderate such as Kaine and getting an endorsement from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, she may not be able to get the younger, more progressive part of the Democratic party that supported Bernie Sanders to get out and vote.
I take some comfort in your explanation here Mike. I do hope you are right. I think many people around the world will sleep a little easier when your theory is proved!