EC Musings

No.718863662▶

The popular myth is that voters in most states wanted Trump and only the East and West Coast wanted Hillary, and that is why he won the electoral vote.

That is only a myth. If every state's electors were proportional to the actual vote in each state, and not winner take all, Hillary would have won the election.

There were 11 states in which neither candidate won 50% of the vote: AZ, CO, FL, ME, MI, MN, NC, NH, NV, PA and WI. All of those were winner take all, and Trump won the EVs from those eleven 102-31. Had they been distributed by the percentage of the popular vote, Trump's edge would be 67-66 and he would have fallen shy of the 270 needed to be elected.

So his EV win was an illusion of the "majority of America supporting him".

The irony is that the last time the popular vote was brought up as a Constitutional Amendment was in 1969, after Nixon narrowly beat Humphrey, and there was bipartisan support for dropping the Electoral College, and the idea was support by President Nixon.

The Amendment passed the House and was defeated in the Senate by filibuster by southern Democrats who supported Wallace in '68, before it could even get to a state vote.

The idea was never seriously brought up again in Congress. Democrats have only themselves to blame for the popular vote not deciding the election.