Contact John Templon at john.templon@buzzfeed.com. Some delegates, including James Wilson and James Madison, preferred popular election of the executive. There have been growing calls to abolish the system and a Gallup poll released in September shows that 61 percent of the U.S. public would support having it axed in favor of electing a president by popular vote. The current estimates range from zero for a few non-competitive places, such as Wyoming and Washington, DC, to more than eight for Pennsylvania. Posted by Andrew on 13 October 2004, 1:27 pm. In fact, I love to write about all trending topics, illustrating patterns and trends in a quick, clear and meaningful way. Still, the pattern is clear: White voters disproportionately live in states that have the most impact on the presidential election. For many people outside the United States (and for some Americans), the Electoral College is a cumbersome and outdated way of electing a president that tends to make very little sense. Ao continuar com a navegação em nosso site, você aceita o uso de cookies. While it is impossible to know who will vote in the 2020 election, the Census Bureau tracks the number of registered voters by certain demographics every two years. In 2012, Donald Trump said, "The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy. What would it take to achieve something close to parity for voters who are not white? For many people outside the United States (and for some Americans), the Electoral College is a cumbersome and outdated way of electing a president that tends to make very little sense. Here is a closer look, demographic by demographic and state by state, at the key dynamics. Thus, American politics evolved to have two national parties, each of which needs to appeal to as many people as possible. ET. First, it forces candidates to appeal to a wider range of voters. Based on thousands of simulations, their research suggests that the bias in 2020 will likely favor Trump again, but to a lesser degree than in 2016. Utilizamos cookies, próprios e de terceiros, que o reconhecem e identificam como um usuário único, para garantir a melhor experiência de navegação, personalizar conteúdo e anúncios, e melhorar o desempenho do nosso site e serviços. The final vote tally may differ. Trump's victory marked the fifth time a U.S. president was elected to office despite losing the popular vote. Meanwhile, the arguments in favor of the Electoral College almost exclusively consist of explicit or implicit arguments against democracy itself. Want to see more stories like this? Letter to the editor. Posted on October 28, 2020, at 1:44 p.m. Gore’s Electoral College vote was concentrated on the West Coast, the mid-Atlantic, and New England, reflecting the growing prominence of upscale … “The Electoral College is not democratic and, today, no longer reflects the popular will. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. In addition, state demographics are always shifting, and this analysis uses voter registration data from 2016. This election, voters who are white wield far more power than voters of color. The Electoral College, like the House, is tied into a larger constitutional and factional system that moderates political demands and ambitions, and ties together the country. The study authors found that the Electoral College's winner-take-all approach favors Republicans and has pushed them to victories in 2000 and … It is well known that the Electoral College favors small states: every state, no matter how small, gets at least 3 electoral votes, and so small states have more electoral votes per voter. Why Does The Electoral College Still Exist. (Although the table distinguishes between white voters regardless of ethnicity and non-Hispanic white voters, it does not make similar distinctions for Black or Asian American voters.). The Electoral College system drifts in and out of the American consciousness every four years, especially when a candidate wins the Electoral College, but loses the popular vote. There was also a gross underestimation about Donald Trump’s election strategy — though he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, he handily … *Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista), Share who support amending the Constitution and using the popular vote. Become a BuzzFeed News member. In a livestream last night, Glenn Beck said that if Democrats win, America would “fundamentally transform into a democracy.” Trump didn’t like the Electoral College, until he did. John Templon BuzzFeed News Reporter The average white non-Hispanic voter could have nearly two times the influence on this election than the average Asian voter, according to a BuzzFeed News analysis. The Electoral College has, at various times, given an advantage to Democrats, Republicans, and the now-defunct Whig Party. I am a Statista data journalist, covering technological, societal and media topics through visual representation. We then normalized the weighted averages by the average weighted VPI for all registered voters as a whole, putting everything back on a scale where 1 would represent equal power for each voter. A large majority of Americans support getting rid of the Electoral College. One of the major obstacles to getting rid of the Electoral College: Right now, both Democrats and Republicans currently tend to believe that the Electoral College favors … When Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 despite losing the popular vote by around three million, much of the world wondered how such an outcome was possible. Published 5:00 am EST, Wednesday, December 9, 2020 But the Electoral College requires a candidate to win a majority of electoral votes. Either the elimination of the Electoral College or a massive reorganization of the political landscape. The Electoral College is stacked against nonwhite voters to such a degree that this year, the average white, non-Hispanic voter appears to have almost twice the power to decide the election as the average Asian American voter, according to a data analysis by BuzzFeed News. I am a Statista data journalist, covering technological, societal and media topics through visual representation. This time around, the political map has shifted, but the effect on voters remains. Neither seems likely to happen before 2024. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The dots are sized by the number of registered voters in the state or district. Pennsylvania, the state that FiveThirtyEight currently says is most likely to decide the election, has a registered voter population that is disproportionately white. California exerts a similar effect on the overall voting power of Asian Americans — the state is home to more than a third of the country’s Asian American registered voters. This “well known fact” is, in fact, true. In the 91st Congress, Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-NY) introduced the proposal, which would abolish the Electoral College in favor of a direct popular election with a 40% threshold and a runoff if no threshold was achieved. Caso não concorde com o uso cookies dessa forma, você deverá ajustar as configurações de seu navegador ou deixar de acessar o nosso site e serviços. A new analysis finds that immigration will dramatically reshape the Electoral College map in favor of the Democratic Party after completion of the 2020 census. 23% of Republicans favor a change. Only three states — Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina — are inside the pivotal top-right quadrant. BuzzFeed News used the counts from 2016, the year of the most recent presidential election — specifically Table 4b of the Census Bureau's Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2016, which examines registration by sex, race, and Hispanic origin on a statewide level. As another U.S. presidential election goes right to the wire, Americans could be in for a long and drawn out contest with millions of votes in key battleground states still to be counted. The chart below compares the Voter Power Index — for each state and district with electoral votes — to the percentage of registered voters there who identify as white and non-Hispanic. FiveThirtyEight’s VPI metric reflects the fact that voters in some states have more power to decide elections than others, based on how competitive the presidential race is there, how many people live in the state (smaller states have more electoral votes per capita), and how other states are leaning. So does Wisconsin, the state with the second-highest VPI. With the results of the 2016 election, this has now happened five times in American history. But such a high proportion of Hispanic registered voters live in California and Texas — two states very unlikely to decide the election — that Hispanic voters end up substantially less powerful than average. The Electoral College favors voters in small states. Nevada is the only state that has a higher proportion of Asian American voters than the national average and a Voter Power Index above 1, meaning it is the only state where the Electoral College is more advantageous to Asian American voters than a national popular vote. A majority of voters says the Electoral College system should be abandoned in favor of a national popular vote, according to a new poll. Looks like your browser doesn't support JavaScript. “It … Para saber mais sobre nossa política de cookies, acesse link. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of the electoral college in the context of modern American politics. If there were three or more parties, that would almost never happen. The horizontal pink line separates states and districts with a VPI above 1 from those with a VPI below 1. However, that support diverges widely based on … ... A total sham and a travesty." John Templon is a data reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. The Electoral College system gives more voting power to some races over others. Politico Video On Sixty Minutes on November 13, 2016, President-Elect Trump said: "I would rather see it, where you went with simple votes. The Electoral College was never intended to be the “perfect” system for picking the president, says George Edwards III, emeritus political science professor at Texas A&M University. (The terminology here comes from the US Census Bureau, which considers “Hispanic” to be an ethnicity, referring to people of any race who identify as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish.) To learn more about this analysis, you can access the data and code on GitHub. BuzzFeed News conducted an analysis that combines voter registration data from the US Census with the “Voter Power Index” (VPI), a tool devised by the statistical analysis site FiveThirtyEight. Smaller values mean the voters of that demographic have less power under the Electoral College. Trump’s abuse of the Electoral College in pursuit of ending American democracy and installing himself as ruler provides a new reason to ditch it. John Templon / BuzzFeed News / Sources: US Census and FiveThirtyEight, who identify as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish, publishes data files containing the forecast’s output, Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2016. The reason, in short, is that white voters are much more likely than other voters to live in swing states — places such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan — where their 2020 ballots have a greater chance of deciding who becomes president. None of the arguments in favor of keeping it ― that evade the “it helps my party win” argument ― holds water. In fact, I love to write about all trending topics. I favor the Electoral College for three reasons. Gallup reports 61 percent of Americans support abolishing the Electoral College in favor of the popular vote. (“NE-2” in the chart refers to Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which has one electoral vote of its own, separate from the state’s overall votes.). A value of 1.00 would mean that voters of that demographic have as much power through the Electoral College as they would with a national popular vote. It will be interesting to see whether support increases even further in the wake of yet another contest that has sent voters' anxiety levels soaring. The quirks of the Electoral College system were exposed in 2016 when Donald Trump secured the presidency with an Electoral College majority, even … The bill was wildly popular in the House, passing 338-70, yet failed to pass in the Senate due to a filibuster. There are caveats. Some say the electoral college is key to maintaining what’s good about U.S. politics, while others want to abolish the institution in favor of a more direct system. Our work at Statista has been featured in publications including Mashable, the Wall Street Journal and Business Insider. However, once the Electoral College had been decided on, several delegates (Mason, Butler, Morris, Wilson, and Madison) openly recognized its ability to protect the election process from cabal, corruption, intrigue, and faction. You may opt-out by. Back to Main Page For arguments against the Electoral College, go here. Chemerinsky said the Electoral College "proportionately favors smaller states over larger states." Esses Cookies nos permitem coletar alguns dados pessoais sobre você, como sua ID exclusiva atribuída ao seu dispositivo, endereço de IP, tipo de dispositivo e navegador, conteúdos visualizados ou outras ações realizadas usando nossos serviços, país e idioma selecionados, entre outros. On April 26, 2018, President Donald Trump told Fox & Friends that "I would rather have a popular election." Like nearly everything in American politics today, there is a sharp partisan divide on the issue with 89 percent of Democrats wanting the Electoral College abolished compared to 23 percent of Republicans. Hispanic voters, on the other hand, have a few states solidly in the influential top-right quadrant: Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. What this means in a nutshell is that voters in U.S. states cast their ballot for electors who then pledge to vote for a president and vice president. (You can read more about the methodology at the bottom of this post.). BuzzFeed News used the election forecast from the morning of Oct. 28, 2020, for this analysis. For one, the BuzzFeed News analysis is based on election forecasts and voter registrations. States in that quadrant meet two criteria: They have a VPI above 1, and Black residents make up a higher proportion of registered voters than they do nationally. Compare the chart above to the one below, which shows the same distribution but for Black voters. Now it gives a clear advantage to Republicans. FiveThirtyEight updates its election forecast every day and publishes data files containing the forecast’s output, including its Voter Power Index calculations. The Electoral College Still Favors White Voters Voters Of Color Have Less Power In The Electoral College Than White Voters This election, voters who are white wield far more power than voters of color. How the Electoral College works – and how it affected battleground states in 2020 Critics say the Electoral College process puts too much emphasis on … 68% of independents want to replace it. Each state, no matter how big or small, gets the same number of … They examined the degree of Electoral College bias in past elections and the degree to which it can be predicted in advance from prior state voting patterns, going back to 1980. His secure PGP fingerprint is 2FF6 89D6 9606 812D 5663 C7CE 2DFF BE75 55E5 DF99. What, exactly, is driving these disparities? BuzzFeed News highlighted a similar effect in 2016. The system was designed by America's framers whereby members of the House and Senate are elected by voters while the president and vice-president are appointed by electors as spelled out in Article II of the Constitution. The Electoral College system, long a source of controversy, came under especially heavy criticism after the 2016 presidential election when Republican Donald Trump lost the nationwide popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by over 2.8 million votes but won the Electoral College—and thus the presidency—by 74 electoral votes. Reader favors popular vote over electoral college. 89% of Democrats support replacing the Electoral College system. Based on the way we expect results to turn out, Trump would need about 40 electors to defy their state’s popular vote for Biden and cast ballots for Trump when the electoral college … BuzzFeed News calculated the weighted average of VPI for each demographic group by multiplying the number of registered voters by the VPI for each electoral unit, adding up those results, and dividing by the total registered voters for that group nationwide. © 2020 Forbes Media LLC. The table below shows the results of that analysis, broken down by demographic group. The vertical pink line represents the proportion of registered voters, nationally, who identify as white and non-Hispanic. The VPI measures the relative likelihood that a voter will cast the deciding ballot in the presidential election. President Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by about 3 million votes but won the Electoral College. Opponents of the electoral vote argue that the system favors rural, less populated states like Mississippi over more urban, heavily populated states like California or Florida. Patrick supports eliminating the electoral college in favor of the popular vote, his campaign told The Post. Data journalist covering technological, societal and media topics, EY & Citi On The Importance Of Resilience And Innovation, Impact 50: Investors Seeking Profit — And Pushing For Change, Michigan Economic Development Corporation With Forbes Insights. 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