From: pswanson@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Paul Swanson)
Subject: Re: Polls: are Americans fickle?
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 23:10:50 GMT

In article <ncovey.714862474@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> ncovey@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (neil covey) writes:
>In <1992Aug26.151428.13783@Princeton.EDU> pswanson@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Paul Swanson) writes:
>
>>In article <adams.714753937@spssig> adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:
>>>
>>>Not to mention that national popular vote polls tell nothing about how the
>>>electoral college will turn out.  Individual polls in each state need to be
>>>conducted, and electoral projections made.  Why?  Because it's likely Bush
>>>could get slaughtered popularly, but still scrape by and win electorally...
>>>
>>There simply is no precedent for someone loosing big in the popular vote
>>and winning in the electoral college.  All this talk about the electoral
>>college lock for the Republicans is garbage.  The fact that there are
>>states which are sure to go for Bush implies rather the opposite of what
>>most people seem to think.  Namely Clinton can win with a minority of
>>the popular vote but Bush cannot.  Why?  Lets examine the situation.
>
>>A state that is firmly pro-Bush implies that Bush will win there by
>>quite a majority, say 10% at worst.  Now, supposedly the Democrats don't
>>have a lock on any state, which means that most states that they win
>>will be by a much smaller margin that the states where Bush has a lock.
>>I'll leave the math as an exercise to the reader but it should be fairly
>>clear that for Clinton to get more total votes that Bush he will have to
>>carry far more states than Bush which, in turn, implies that Clinton
>>will win the electoral college if he wins the popular vote.
>
>>Basically it boils down to this; the election is won by the person who
>>wins the popular vote.  The rest is fodder for newspaper columnists.
>
>Paul's logic is faulty in numerous places.  

Actually there is nothing wrong with my logic but perhaps you didn't
understand what I wrote.  In part, that is because I was being too
brief.

>There have been (or, at
>least, has been) [an] election(s) in which the loser has had a greater popular
>vote, and there have been races in which the popular vote would only
>have had to switch by a few thousand in a couple of states to throw the
>election to someone who had far fewer popular votes

If you'll refer back to what I wrote you'll see that I said there is no
precedent for someone loosing the popular vote by a BIG margin and
winning in the electoral vote (which was the claim in the post I was
responding to).

> [rest deleted since it basically agrees with my post]

The point I was trying to make in my post was basically in response to
a theory propagated by some newspaper columnists and a book which I
forget the name of which basically contends that the Republicans have a
lock on the electoral college.  Their reasoning is that the Republicans
receive a solid majority of the votes in the South and West and
as a result have about 210 electoral votes rapped up.  Therefore the 
Republicans need only concentrate on a few more states to win.  Some people
(including, I believe, the person I was responding to) seem to think
this means that the Republicans can win in the electoral college while
loosing in the popular vote.  The point I was trying to demonstrate (but
didn't state explicitly) was that the so called Republican lock means
that the Democrats, not the Republicans, can win the electoral vote
while loosing the popular vote.  So this Republican lock business is a
bunch of garbage.  It boils down to the fact that more people have
voted Republican in recent elections than Democrat.

Currently the polls show Clinton leading by 10% in the popular vote and,
miracle of miracles, the electoral lock for the Republicans has
disappeared.  This is because it was a mirage to begin with.  The
probablity is about zero that Clinton will win the popular vote by 10%
or even 5% and not be elected president.  The same goes for Bush but the
probability of him even winning by 10% is exceedingly remote.

I view our electoral process as working this way:  If someone wins the
popular vote they will be president.  If the vote is within some small
margin then the popular vote should be considered a tie and the
election is then determined by other means, namely the electoral
college.  I think you'll find that this is how every previous election
has turned out (since the creation of the electoral college).  One other
point.  When Perot was in the race there was alot of discussion on about
the election being thrown into the House of Representatives because no
candidate would have a majority of the electoral votes.  This was viewed
as bad since the person with the most votes (either electorally or
popularly) might not be elected president.  My feeling is that if the
election gets to the House there is no clear popular mandate for a particular
candidate and it may as well be left to the House to decide since the
general population didn't have a real preference (i.e. someone that more
than half of the people agreed upon).

Paul.
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