Support For Eliminating Electoral College Hits Two-Decade Low
Notwithstanding the election results, support for eliminating the Electoral College is at a 20-year low.
Last month, for the fifth time in American and the second time in sixteen years, the candidate with the most popular votes lost the election due to the Electoral College, As things stand now, Hillary Clinton appears to some 2.5 million votes ahead of Donald Trump in the popular vote, and that margin may grow a bit more as the final numbers come in. As it did after the far more divisive 2000 election, this has led many to call for an end to the Electoral College in favor of a system where the President would be elected via a nationwide popular vote, something that would obviously require a Constitutional Amendment. As things stand, though, that outcome appears unlikely given the fact that public support for such an amendment has dipped to a five-year low:
With Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by more than 2.7 million votes (and counting), the idea of getting rid of the electoral college has become very popular in certain circles of late. Al Gore, a victim of the electoral college in 2000, became the latest high-profile supporter earlier this week. “After the Supreme Court decision in 2000, I continued to support the electoral college because the original purpose was to tie the states together,” he said. “I have changed my view on that. I do think it should be eliminated.”
It’s easy to think that “everyone” wants to move to the popular vote to decide the presidential race. Nope! In fact, quite the opposite.
A new Gallup poll shows that for the first time in almost five decades there is less than majority support for a constitutional amendment that would institute the popular vote as the method of picking the president. Just 49 percent said they want to replace the electoral college system with a popular vote, a remarkable drop from the 80 percent who said the same in the wake of the 1968 election. (Richard Nixon won 301 electoral votes but carried the popular vote by less than a percent.) For what it’s worth, after Gore won the popular vote but lost the election to George W. Bush in 2000, support for swapping the electoral college for the popular vote was about 60 percent.
Despite the decline in support for the idea, there are still marginally more people who prefer the popular vote to the electoral college: 49 percent to 47 percent. But the margin between the two options has never been closer.
Why? Simple. Republicans are now deeply opposed to dumping the electoral college. In 2011, a majority (54 percent) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents favored amending the Constitution to make the popular vote decisive. Now? Just 19 percent feel that way.
It doesn’t take a genius — thankfully! — to figure out why. Support for the popular vote as the decider would mean President Hillary Clinton. And, no matter what they might think of President-elect Donald Trump, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents do not want that.
Presumably, if the election had gone the other way, with Hillary Clinton winning the Electoral College and Donald Trump winning the popular vote, then it’s likely that these numbers would be reversed to some degree and it would be Republicans calling for reform while Democrats defend a system that put their candidate in office. What’s interesting, of course, is that there were seeming majorities in both parties that seemed to favor reforming the way we elect Presidents to eliminate the Electoral College, and that support for such an idea goes back at least to 2001 and the wake of the 2000 election, but that nothing got done in this regard. The main reason for that, of course, goes back to an idea I’ve mentioned before, namely the fact that Americans prioritize the political issues that they are base their voting decisions on in such a way that the fact that something has majority support doesn’t necessarily mean that it is likely get done or to have a huge impact on a given election. We also see this with regard to an issue such as gun control, where surveys indicate widespread support for measures such as universal background checks, but election results show that few candidates who emphasize these issues end up winning elections. For much of the past decade, the Electoral College appears to be a similar issue, one where a majority in both parties supported reform but nothing happened largely because it is a low priority issue for voter and elected officials alike. Indeed, I am not even aware of any member of the House or Senate who has introduced legislation to begin the Amendment process on this issue since the 2000 election and, if they did, it certainly never resulted in either committee hearings or action on the floor of the House or Senate.
With these new poll numbers, of course, it’s even less likely that we’ll say any action on this issue any time soon. However, even if we return to the pre-2016 status quo where support for reform is above 50% for both Republican and Democrats, reform is unlikely simply because of what would be necessary to accomplish it. In order to amend the Constitution, you need two-thirds of the members of Congress and three-quarters of the states to come together and support an amendment. The last time that happened was some forty years ago when the 26th Amendment, which expanded the right to vote to people between the age of 18 and 21, was ratified. Since then, the only change to the Constitution that we’ve seen was the addition of the 27th Amendment, which regulates Congressional pay and which was actually a holdover from the original Bill of Rights that lied in limbo until it was ratified by the small handful of states needed to satisfy the requirements of Article V. Other than that, while several Amendments have been suggested on a wide variety of issues, none have made it out of Congress with the exception of the Equal Rights Amendment, which was a source political controversy in the 1970s but ultimately died without being ratified by enough states before expiring. Most likely, the same thing would happen to any effort to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College.
Probably easier to eliminate the racists in the rust-belt.
Almost everyone in this country now fights for their team and not for any ideal or principle, and that applies to Left and Right. The principle is democracy. The principle is that people choose their government. In two of the last five elections the people have not chosen the president, and this year that reality is glaringly obvious. The candidate who got 2.5 million more votes is the loser, and the guy who lost the vote is the winner. It’s nuts and leaves us unable to pass the laugh test when recommending our system to other countries. That in turn diminishes our prestige and power in the world.
You cannot be the world’s greatest democracy when an archaic system is allowed to simply disregard the clear will of the voters. I realize Americans are blind to their own bullsh!t and hypocrisy, but the rest of humanity is not, and we look ridiculous. We look like a banana republic.
Our system is increasingly irrational and sclerotic. We have lost the capacity to reform ourselves. We are no longer capable of adapting. Sooner or later that sclerosis will kill us, if it hasn’t already.
@C. Clavin: Eliminate?? Oh I forgot you’re a lunatic.
@michael reynolds: You lost bedwetter – now you can take your ball and go home and have a good cry.
Apparently the spam filter is Anti Constitutional. Must be controlled by President Pud!
@bandit:
That’s what you racists want, right? To eliminate everyone not exactly like you? So same to ya, fwck-head.
@bandit:
Why do you force that poor dog to be the avatar of a nasty little cretin? He looks like a good dog, not a bad dog. And I’ve certainly never met a dog who wasn’t your superior in character.
@bandit: cli
(not worth a full click)
@bandit:
Just remember: Cheeto was not elected by the American people, Hillary was. 2.5 million and counting. Which means we outnumber you.
I agree with Michael that the EC is lame. But I think equally depressing about our process is the level of participation. We consider 64% of the voting age public turning out to vote as great (2008). This election it apparently is closer to 55-58%. Outside of EC reform, which will never happen in any of our lifetimes, I don’t get why there is not more focus towards making it easier for people to register and cast a vote in our elections. How about an election weekend?
I think the dog avatar is appropriate as someone always has to clean up after him after he takes a dump on all these threads.
@Jc:
https://www.google.com/#q=republican+voter+suppression
@Jc:
It’s hard to motivate a California voter when our outcome is certain and our votes never courted.
@michael reynolds:
We’re an ATM for candidates of both parties. Trump knew he was going to get shellacked in CA, yet he did a drive by to hit up the few donors here who supported him.
@michael reynolds: It’s only nuts if you look at the popular vote as a solid number and don’t break it down. We are a republic. A country of individual states. States that for the most part are 50/50 on party line politics. Election to election it varies which way a state will go, red or blue, but it’s usually only 2-3% one way or the other and sometimes it flips. Oh but she got 2.5 million more, that’s because one state a blue state with a massive population is an anomaly compared to every other state in this country. It doesn’t match the views of the rest of the country when their population votes 66% blue and 33% red. No other state has a demographic like that that is so polarized to one side or the other. That said she won 8 million votes to Trumps 4 million there, giving her 4 million votes. Without this one state she’d have lost the popular vote by 1.5 million if it had a similar demographic to the rest of the nation. She also only won 19 states to his 30. So when people ignorantly spout about getting rid of the electoral college because of the popular vote. It exists so one state doesn’t trample over the rights and opinions of the rest. Most of the country doesn’t feel like California does and it’s about time people actually look at thing and how it really is. Without California’s complete left leanings she’d have been crushed in the popular vote as well.
@michael reynolds:
I hear the Cleveland Indians want a do over because the Cubs didn’t score enough touchdowns…..
@Sarah D: I really tried to respond to your word salad but I couldn’t quite figure out what point you were trying to make other than EVERYONE WHO LIVES IN CALIFORNIA = BAD AND DO NOT MATTER. To you apparently the 560k people who live in Wyoming are way more important than the 38.8 million people who live in California. South/North Dakota combined has less population than Chicago. Idaho has a smaller population than Chicago. All those states have a smaller population than Chicago but they are supposed to matter more because OMG STATE….
Your argument distilled to it’s essence is that people who live in sparsely populated red states are more important as individuals than those living in populated blue states. It’s funny that you don’t care to complain about Texas or red states that behave like California. Also very telling…
EDIT : I don’t think people realize how small of a population live in the red states in the rocky mountain/plains area. I’m also tired of hearing the “OMG HE WON MORE STATES” crap…
Please Mr. Moderator, Let My Comment Go!
@Sarah D: The EC doesn’t exist “so one state doesn’t trample over the rights and opinions of the rest,” it exists so a fundamentally unsuited and unqualified danger to our country like Trump doesn’t get elected. And it has failed.
Aw, c’mon now you guys. The sun will rise tomorrow. This is for you you poor dears.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tIfQipkkOqs
@Sarah D: I’m also a a loss to understand your logic.
You seem to be suggesting that the role of President is limited to representing 50 states. If that is the principle role of the presidency, then election by the EC makes some sense.
OTOH, if the role of the presidency is to represent the people of the US, then a popular election would be appropriate.
IMO, the EC could still be maintained, however if the “winner-take-all” policy (at the state level), were abandoned, then the EC vote would more closely resemble the popular vote.
Regardless, the present EC scheme is not what Hamilton describes in Federalist.
It is my considered opinion that the US presidents role should be to first represent the people’s interests, even when that is in conflict with the state’s interests.
The original intent for the electoral college involved two key features:
-A voting scheme that elevates state interests to the same level as popular interests
-Indirect voting, as a check-and-balance against a bad election result
In practice, we have the first point but not the second.
If you’re going to support original intent, then it isn’t enough to say that the winner should be the candidate with the most electoral votes. It also matters that the president is not incompetent, corrupt or crooked. Anyone who argues otherwise while claiming to honor original intent is a cherry picking hypocrite, as it is pretty clear from Federalist 68 that bad presidents should be rejected by the electoral college even if the public wants them.
Trump appears to be everything that a president shouldn’t be. A properly functioning electoral college would toss him out on his backside.
If the electoral college can allow someone as unworthy as Trump to become president, then it needs to fixed or kicked to the curb. If an elector is simply going to go along with the stupidity, then there is no point in having electors.
@Sarah D:
Of the 50 states, only 14 of them are net payers (paying more to the feds than they get back.)
If only the net payers could vote, then Clinton would have won by a landslide.
California is one of those 14 states. Why Californians bother to carry you, I don’t know. What good are you doing exactly?
@Sarah D:
Tell you what, sweetheart, why don’t you get your Mango Messiah to propose a constitutional amendment allowing California to go away as an independent country? Because I guarantee you at least three quarters of us would be happy to wave sayonara across the Mojave. Tell you what, let’s see if Washington and Oregon want to play, too.
The rump USA would be an intellectual, technological and cultural backwater overnight. You’d be poorer, too. Truth is you’re dead weight around our necks.
And think of what we could have. No more pandering to you people. We’d watch you fight losing colonial wars, and we’d make movies. You could complain about the lack of good paying jobs in Analbeads, Arkansas, and we could drink wine and eat artisanal cheese while enjoying the sight of the sun setting over the Golden Gate. Everyone would be a winner! You wouldn’t have to feel inferior to us – uglier, fatter, poorer, paler, dumber – and we could go back to not knowing you exist. It’s a win-win.
@michael reynolds:
You meant the 52.3% of California that doesn’t belong the the federal government outright? And if we’re breaking it up, why force those who don’t want to secede to leave. Better to let people vote by county at least so only those counties where the majority want to leave, leave. Although the United States would keep the bases and the other land owned by the federal government.
Popular vote elections would make all 50 states important areas to campaign in to gather votes instead of a small number of “battleground” states where the electoral college numbers are at stake. It would be an important move towards real democratic elections in this nation.
Five times since 1824, the Democratic Party candidate has won the popular vote, but lost the election in with the electoral college. Democrats face an inbuilt disadvantage in presidential elections because small Republican-leaning states such as Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska and others have the advantage that a far smaller number of voters elect an elector than the much larger group of voters required in Democratic-leaning states like California or New York to elect one elector. This seems a violation of “one man, one vote” standards where the votes of some voters count for more than the votes of other voters. Electoral reform where the electors are based only on the number of U.S. Representatives would probably fix this problem. It’s adding in the two Senators as additional electors to tiny states that skews the elections towards a Republican advantage.
@Sarah D:
First of all, Clinton’s current lead in California is 62%, not 66%.
Second, Trump received 62% or more in Alabama, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Which goes to show that (a) your entire premise is based on a lie (b) by your own logic, all those states should be written out of the vote for being unrepresentative of the rest of the country.
“It also matters that the president is not incompetent, corrupt or crooked.”
And Hillary lost, so what’s your beef?
“Of the 50 states, only 14 of them are net payers (paying more to the feds than they get back.)”
People pay taxes, states don’t.
@Guarneri:
True, the people in California who pay federal income taxes get back from the federal government back less than 80 cents on the dollar, as contrasted with most of the good people in Red States who pay federal taxes who get back more than the dollar they paid in federal income taxes.
@michael reynolds: If we hadn’t fought a civil war to establish that there’s no takesy-backsies on statehood, the thought of California seceding would be a truly tempting one.
“OK, California, you’re on your own. Now that you’re not part of the United States, we just have to take care of some paperwork.
First up, here’s a bill for all the federal land you’re taking.
Next, we now have a tariff on water and electricity exports to non-NAFTA nations. Here are your new water and electric rates.
Here’s a copy of a letter we just sent to Russia, China and Mexico, along with the rest of the world, informing them that we are no longer responsible for your defense.
Have a nice life.”
And here’s a really interesting observation. The ten states where Hillary won by the biggest margin have, all of them, had more people moving out thatn moving in. Meanwhile the ten states where Trump won by the biggest margin have had more people moving in than moving out.
So, michael, when you finally move your ass out of California to New Zealand as promised, you can be part of that trend, too!
@michael reynolds: Oh, and if you’re going to go, could you do it before CalPERS implodes, and you come looking to the rest of us to bail you out? Pretty please?
@Sarah D:
No, we may have started that way but we aren’t anymore. That view is an anachronism that is enshrined in the EC and the Senate but isn’t actually reflected in how we think about ourselves. When we go to a foreign country, what percentage of Americans identify as such versus stating what state they are from? How many can’t imagine themselves living anywhere but the state in which they grew up? Very few.
And that makes sense when you consider how migratory we are. As one example:
So are the 50% of the people in North Carolina who weren’t born there North Carolinian to the extent that there interests and votes should count more/less/different than they did when they formerly lived in a different state?
Really?
And all of this , of course, underscores the foolishness of the bulk of your post in which you seem to claim that Californians are (a) somehow a different class of people than live elsewhere and (b) should have their votes worth less than someone from Wyoming because there are more people who choose to live in California than Wyoming. The reality is that only 54% of Californians were born there. The rest are from somewhere else.
As an aside, California actually isn’t the most screwed by the EC, it is #9. When you look at the voting-eligible population per electoral vote for each state, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Virginia, Michigan and Texas all are more diluted than California.
That’s rich coming from someone who refused to pay his own hospital bills and left others to pick up the tab…
A republic is a form of government in which there is a separate executive who is elected or appointed. It has nothing to do with whether there are states.
Australia has states, but it isn’t a republic because its head of state is the British monarch who no one elected or appointed. Having states doesn’t make a country a republic.
The common feature of republics is that they don’t have monarchs. Instead of having a hereditary head of state, a republic will choose one.
@Guarneri:
Congratulations: You are the winner of today’s Dunning-Kruger Award.
Aww, how sweet, all the Republicans want California to stay. I’ll take it as a tacit acknowledgment of just how dull, weak and backward this country would be without the liberal stronghold of the west coast.
You are absolutely correct: we are most of what’s good in the US. We are the future. Unfortunately we’re the future dragging Alabama and Ohio behind us like lead weights. Like Forrest Gump with his leg braces. Imagine how fast we could run without the losers clinging to us. Imagine if we could stop shipping our money to you losers.
@Paul Hooson:
Notwithstanding the obvious fact that Republicans have no incentive to change a system that has disproportionately benefited them so many times, I would be in favor of beginning to reduce the influence of small states by eliminating, in each state, at least one of the 2 electors associated with the senators.
Not going to happen, but that’s my compromise solution – an alternative to complete elimination of the Electoral College.
Nice helpful table.
Of the ten biggest ‘donor’ states – states that pay more federal tax than they get back – all but one is a blue state. Of the ten biggest ‘taker’ states, all ten are red states.
We can slice the electorate up any number of ways, but certainly one way is winners and losers. Winners/Losers, Smart/Dumb, Computers/Coal, Tesla/Pickup, Future/Past. Those who pay and those who are supported.
Ah well, it’ll never happen. We understand: you need our creativity, our productivity, our success, to subsidize your dull, gray, backward lives. No problem, losers. We’re liberals, and we like losers.
@michael reynolds:
Now I’m even more mystified as to why many people believe that liberals are condescending buttholes.
@Matt:
They understand, they just don’t care. Those who argue the amount of red of the map is the most important thing are literally arguing territory > citizen. It never occurs to them if that were true a group of rich Democrats could pay for a liberal homestead to be set up in each of these sparely populated counties, pay people to live there for a few years and telecommute and BOOM! Flipped Montana, y’all! Watch that map turn blue.
To say millions of people don’t count because they live in State X is just as democratically moronic as saying rural areas don’t matter. Removing the cap on the amount of electors and making it truly and directly proportional across the board is a great start. One elector per 10K if you’re generous, 1 per a million if you are not. That way, you can claim to have as many states as you want under your belt but realize one state will millions of acres and 100K people isn’t the same as 100K acres and millions of people.
@Ratufa:
Well, dude, the Donald has decreed an end to Political Correctness, right? Did you think that was just for the benefit of his voters who want to use the n-word? Nah, it works for us, too. Truth! Let’s have PC-free truth, right? Well, the fact is we pay the bills.
@Ratufa:
I have always wondered why conservatives in other states proclaim themselves to be so victimized and hurt by the attitudes of liberals when so many conservatives refer to California as ‘the land of fruits and nuts’ and so forth. It’s a two way street.
Basically, conservatives seem to be permanently victimized by liberals. There is seemingly an inexhaustible supply of angry conservative White voters.
@michael reynolds:
Be careful about flying too close to the sun, I hear it gets hot.
@Ratufa:
Perhaps red states conservatives should stop biting the hand that feeds them and pays for their roads and funds their welfare programs.
One of the basic logical deficiencies of the American right is that it is a club of takers who have fooled themselves into believing that they are givers, sanctimoniously thumping their chests as they crap on those who pay for their party. A few more brain cells and a bit of gratitude would be nice.
@michael reynolds: This comment is precisely why the Electoral College needs to stay in place. Baron Michael von Reynolds would use the more populous states as the kingdom and the smaller states would be vassal states and serfs to the top 5-6 heavily populated states.
The Baron will try to overlook the fact that California has used up much of it’s water and the Valley farms have been sorely neglected. No oil rigs allowed and the state teeters on bankruptcy due to the disgraceful pension boondoggle.
Oh, BTW Your Excellency: Who buys your books, movies and your other products if the serfs are kept hobbled and poor?
@Pch101: Ooh, thankee Massa. I does believe you da Boss alright, yessuh.
Dem’s folks in the rust belt that built your roads, dams, cars and airplanes is just ungrateful whelps. And don’ get me started on dose poor black Mississippi farmers. Dey sho’ oughta pull their own weight.
I see your bigotry and racism. Too bad you can’t see it in yourself.
@john430:
Doctors Dunning and Kruger will see you now.
@Pch101: Why should I see them? They weren’t able to help you. Your low IQ prevents you from cognitive assessment.
Someone needs to let John know that “I know you are but what am I?” is the sort of comeback that should be avoided by anyone over the age of 6.
I have a feeling these numbers might change in the not to distant future. That assumes Gallup is right. I am to the point that I don’t really trust polls anymore.
@john430: I live in Indiana and I know a lot of people who voted for Trump because they actually expected him to do the things he campaigned on…a lot of them are already having second thoughts and he has not even taken the oath of office yet. After all, he has already lied to them.
The truth is it would be easier for 100,000 Democrats to relocate from place like California and New York and move to the swing states. After all, they already have the popular vote, they need to learn to work the system so that they can get the EC votes as well.
@Jc:
The broken system directly suppresses participation. If you’re a voter in New York or Mississippi or California who cares mainly about the Presidential election – what’s the point of showing up?