A Big Chunk of White Americans With Degrees And People Of Color Are Behind Trump
"The Electoral College Will Destroy America"
By Perry Bacon Jr. Sep. 8, 2020, at 7:19 AM
[...]
Outside of the South, a clear majority of white college graduates prefer Biden to Trump in most battleground states. In fact, it’s likely that white voters with degrees will vote Democratic at higher rates than in any recent reelection. That said, at least a third of white college graduates are likely to back Trump in basically every swing state.
What’s keeping this bloc with Trump? Many of these voters are simply longtime Republicans who hold conservative views. But particularly in Georgia and Texas, it’s worth thinking about religion and race. Being white and also an evangelical Protestant is strongly correlated with voting Republican — much more so than being white and not having a college degree. According to data provided to us from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape polling initiative, Georgia ranks seventh among states in terms of the percentage of its white registered voters who are evangelical Protestants (about a third), with North Carolina 10th and Texas 13th. For comparison, Virginia is the state that backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 with the highest percentage of its white registered voters who are evangelical Protestants — it was 17th among the 50 states by this measure.
Common conservative right-wing propaganda. Dishonest. Misleading. Meant to reinforce wrong -headed opinion in the susceptible conservative. Meant to hook any other of the uninformed.
"The Electoral College Will Destroy America"
One example of the above which arrived in my Mailbox today.
---------- Some Facts, The following will take only about 39 second to read and clear up years of misunderstanding.
319 Square Miles
The following will take only about 39 second to read and clear up years of misunderstanding.
In their infinite wisdom, the United States' Founders created the Electoral College to ensure the STATES were fairly represented. Why should one or two densely populated areas speak for the whole of the nation?
The following list of statistics has been making the rounds on the Internet. It should finally put an end to the argument as to why the Electoral College makes sense.
Do share this. It needs to be widely known and understood.
There are 3,141 counties in the United States.
Trump won 3,084 of them.
Clinton won 57.
There are 62 counties in New York State.
Trump won 46 of them.
Clinton won 16.
Clinton won the popular vote by approx. 1.5 million votes.
In the 5 counties that encompass NYC, (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won 4 of these counties; Trump won Richmond)
Therefore, these 5 counties alone, more than accounted for Clinton winning the popular vote of the entire country.
These 5 counties comprise 319 square miles.
The United States is comprised of 3,797,000 square miles.
When you have a country that encompasses almost 4 million square miles of territory, it would be unfair that the vote of those who inhabit a mere 319 square miles should dictate the outcome of a national election.
Large, densely populated cities (NYC, Chicago, LA, etc.) DO NOT and SHOULD NOT speak for the rest of our country!
And...it's been verified and documented that those aforementioned 319 square miles are where the majority of our nation's problems foment.
Help others understand the purpose of the Electoral College by sharing this. ----------
My reply, in essence, here:
Seriously, a fact check is so simple. Before getting there i knew the figure in yours of Hillary winning the popular vote was more than "Clinton won the popular vote by approx. 1.5 million votes " that. By memory it was closer to 2.7 million. Oops
So just on your 1.5 million the all of yours became highly suspect. Before checking anywhere else.
This fact check unarguably PROVES yours is the worst of dishonest propaganda meant to misinform and mislead.
Fact Check: Stats are twisted on counties won by Trump
By Carole Fader Posted Jan 10, 2017 at 6:54 PM
A list of statistics making the rounds on the internet purports that the numbers should put an end to the argument as to why the Electoral College makes sense.
The facts: The email reads: “There are 3,141 counties in the United States. Trump won 3,084 of them. Clinton won 57.
“There are 62 counties in New York State. Trump won 46 of them. Clinton won 16.
“In the five counties that encompass NYC, (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond [Staten Island] and Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won four of these counties; Trump won Richmond).”
FactCheck.org reports that the email numbers might have come from a Nov. 15 Breitbart News article by Michael Patrick Leahy. But the email twists the information.
Leahy wrote that “Donald Trump won an overwhelming 7.5 million popular vote victory in 3,084 of the country’s 3,141 counties or county equivalents in America’s heartland.”
FactCheck.org notes that Leahy isn’t saying that Trump won all 3,084 counties outright — just that in those 3,084 counties, Trump won the popular vote by a large margin.
Leahy also wrote that “Hillary Clinton, in contrast, had an 8.2 million-vote margin in a narrow band of 52 coastal counties and five ‘county equivalent’ cities on the west and east coasts.”
FactCheck.org found it easy to disprove the email’s claim that Trump won all of the 3,084 counties that Leahy looked at in his “heartland” exercise and that Clinton won only 57 overall.
The fact-checker looked at Texas and Georgia — two states that Clinton lost.
Clinton won 27 counties in Texas, which has 38 electoral votes. In Georgia, which has 16 electoral votes, Clinton won 31 counties. That’s 58 counties without including any counties that Clinton won in any of the other states.
The Associated Press also debunked the claim that Clinton only won 57 counties across the country in an article published Dec. 6: “The Associated Press finds that Clinton won 487 counties nationwide, compared with 2,626 for President-elect Donald Trump.”
The AP’s totals for Clinton and Trump are very close to what PolitiFact.com reported, according to FactCheck.org. PolitiFact.com found that Clinton and Trump won 489 and 2,623 counties, respectively, based on preliminary county results from David Leip’s “Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.”
As for that claim about New York, the numbers are largely correct. There are 62 counties in the state, and Trump won 46 of them and Clinton won 16. The difference in population size can be dramatic.
Census data show that Kings County, N.Y., which is in Brooklyn (and which Clinton won), has a population of 2.6 million people while Petroleum County, Montana (which Trump won) has 475.
By Andrew Proko pandrew@vox.com Updated Dec 19, 2016, 10:15am EST
[...]
2) But the outcome of the presidential election is really just settled in a few swing states, right?
[...]
The swing states’ dominance is a consequence of the fact that almost every state chooses to allot all its electoral votes to whoever comes in first place statewide, regardless of his or her margin of victory.
[...]
3) That seems unfair.
Well, there’s a lot that’s unfair — or at the very least undemocratic — about the Electoral College.
For one, the winner of the nationwide popular vote can lose the presidency. In 2000, Al Gore won half a million more votes than George W. Bush nationwide, but Bush won the presidency after he was declared the winner in Florida by a mere 537 votes. And that wasn’t the first time — electoral college/popular vote splits happened in 1876 and 1888 too, and occurred in 2016 too.
Second, there’s swing state privilege. Millions of votes in safe states end up being “wasted,” at least in terms of the presidential race, because it makes no difference whether Clinton wins California by 4 million votes, 400,000 votes, or 40 votes — in any scenario, she gets its 55 electors. Meanwhile, states like Florida and Ohio get the power to tip the outcome just because they happen to be closely divided politically.
Third, a small state bias is also built in, since every state is guaranteed at least three electors (the combination of their representation in the House and Senate). The way this shakes out in the math, the 4 percent of the country’s population in the smallest states end up being allotted 8 percent of Electoral College votes.
And fourth, there’s the possibility for those electors themselves to hijack the outcome.
[...]
6) Well, are there arguments for the Electoral College?
It’s tough to argue with a straight face that this bizarre system is inherently better than just a simple vote. After all, why doesn’t any state elect its governor with an “Electoral College” of various counties? Why does pretty much every other country that elects a president use a simple popular vote, or a vote accompanied with a runoff?
Now, you can argue that the Electoral College’s seeming distortions of the popular will aren’t as bad as they seem — for instance, by pointing out that swing states tend to swing along with the nation rather than overriding its will, or that the popular vote winner almost always wins. But of course, that’s not guaranteed to always be the case, and the biggest major exception (the 2000 election) was an incredibly consequential one.
Others try to fearmonger about the prospect of a contested nationwide recount — which, sure, would be ugly, but if you’ll recall, the Florida recount was also extremely ugly. And since there are so many more votes cast nationally, it’s much less likely that the national vote would end up a near tie than that a tipping point’s state vote would end up as a near tie.
Some argue that the Electoral College ensures regional balance .. http://www.fec.gov/pdf/eleccoll.pdf , since it’s mathematically impossible for a candidate with overwhelming support from just one region to be elected. But realistically, the country is big and broad enough that this couldn’t happen under a popular vote system either — any regional candidate would need to get some support outside his or her region.
But when we get down to brass tacks, the most serious objections to reforming the Electoral College come from rural and small-state elites who fear that under a national popular vote system, they’d be ignored and elections would be decided by people who live in cities.
Gary Gregg of the University of Louisville wrote in 2012 .. http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/keep-electoral-college-for-fair-presidential-votes-084651 .. that eliminating the Electoral College would lead to “dire consequences.” Specifically, he feared that elections would “strongly tilt” in favor of “candidates who can win huge electoral margins in the country’s major metropolitan areas.” He continued:
- If the United States does away with the Electoral College, future presidential elections will go to candidates and parties willing to cater to urban voters and skew the nation’s policies toward big-city interests. Small-town issues and rural values will no longer be their concern. -
And Pete du Pont, a former governor of Delaware (three electoral votes), has made a similar case, calling proposals for a national popular vote an “urban power grab.”
But a national popular vote system wouldn’t devalue the votes of people who live in rural states and small towns. It would accurately value them by treating them equal to people who live in cities, rather than giving them an extra weighting. Furthermore, small-state interests are built into the Senate’s math (where Delaware absurdly gets as many senators as California), and many House districts are rural. So rural and small-state areas are hardly hurting for national political representation.
Sure, candidates might end up spending less time stumping in the rural areas that currently happen to be lucky enough to fall within the borders of swing states, and more time in urban centers. But is that really a convincing rebuttal to the pretty basic and obvious argument that in the most important electoral choice Americans make, their votes should be treated equally?
I assumed their arguments against a national popular vote were valid. But with each new claim, even basic research undermines the opposition to the movement toward a national popular vote to elect the president of the United States.
No, the recent 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling does not affect a National Popular Vote. The ruling dealt with faithless electors, not the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact enacted by Colorado’s legislature and governor.
No, cities would not be advantaged over rural areas. Only one-sixth of the country lives in the top 100 cities. One-fifth live in rural areas. California and New York together only have 18 percent of all voters.
According to the 2010 census, the five biggest cities in the country (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) account for only about six percent of the national population.
The top 20 cities account for only about 10 percent of the population. Even the top 50 cities only account for 15 percent of the nation’s population. Big cities could never dominate under a national popular vote.
Opponents also often say .. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40041769?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents .. a national popular vote would lead to TV campaigns where candidates only attempt to win votes in the largest cities, ignoring the rural areas. Again, the math simply doesn’t support this claim.
The Constitution does not require “winner-take-all.” The Constitution leaves it to the states to decide how their electors are chosen. Currently, 48 states and the District of Columbia use a voting method called winner-take-all.
The state-based, winner-take-all was never discussed at the constitutional convention. In fact, it wasn’t until the 11th presidential election that a majority of the states had a winner-take-all system. States can change the method they use to select their Electoral College votes without any constitutional amendment as Article II, Section I of the Constitution gives states the power to award electors however they see fit.
Some people claim that a national popular vote advantages Democrats. But I can find no hard evidence that this is the case. Since 1988, 38 states have voted the same way .. https://www.270towin.com/same-since-electoral-maps/ .. in presidential elections, giving Democrats an automatic 242-102 electoral vote advantage and placing them a mere 28 electoral votes from clinching the presidency even before the first votes are cast.
Dan Balz’s recent column in The Washington Post posits that the 2020 election may have only four battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida. Can a voting method that lets four states chose the next president really be defended?
Moving from a winner-take-all method to a national popular vote is not a fantasy.
In fact, the National Popular Vote .. http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ .. Interstate Compact, which has now been adopted by 15 states and the District of Columbia, totaling 196 electoral votes, is an actionable and realistic presidential election reform plan. (The compact has also passed in at least one house of state legislatures in eight additional states, accounting for 75 electoral votes.)
Only when the compact hits a total of 270 electoral votes by July 20 in a presidential election year will it take effect. This means a national popular vote will likely not happen in time for the 2020 presidential election, but it certainly may for the 2024 election.
This compact still respects the constitutional role of the states in selecting the president, but it does so through a popular mandate. It’s the best of both worlds. It would also force a Democratic nominee to campaign in red states and a Republican nominee to campaign in blue states.
Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, every vote would have equal value, but neither party would have an automatic advantage. America would finally elect a president of the United States and not a president of the Battleground States of America.
Matt Mackowiak is the president of Potomac Strategy Group, a Republican consultant, a Bush administration and Bush-Cheney re-election campaign veteran and former press secretary to two U.S. senators. His national politics podcast, “Mack on Politics,” may be found on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and on the web at MackOnPolitics.com.
The electoral college is a strange quirk of US politics. Even people serving as electors question the system
"The Electoral College Will Destroy America"
By Emily Olson in Washington DC
Posted 17h ago
When Americans vote for a president, they really are voting for electors in their state who cast the final ballot on their behalf. (Reuters: Jonathan Drake)
More than 156 million Americans voted this year, but the selection of the next US president comes down to just 538: the members of the electoral college.
Actually, it comes down to just 270. A simple majority of the college is all a candidate needs to clinch office.
It may feel like a big game of arithmetic, but every election cycle, the human factor brought by the electors fuels speculation and cynicism over whether the popular vote even matters.
For Democrat Deborah Gonzalez, it took a minute to figure out what, exactly, the duty would entail.
"I was honestly a little confused," she said of the phone call asking if she would serve as an elector for the state of Georgia.
Deborah Gonzalez (left) has been asked to be an elector for the state of Georgia in the 2020 US election. (Twitter: Deborah Gonzalez)
"I thought maybe they meant a delegate — like the people who vote at the convention."
When she pieced it all together she was honoured and a little shocked. She said yes right away.
"Then I asked, 'What does this mean? What do I even do?' It's something you always hear about, but you don't realise you don't really know how it works until you're there."
Out of the 10.6 million residents of Georgia, there's only 16 who get to go through the process every four years.
Every state gets a set number of electors, equal to the total number of that state's federal members of congress. There's three extra electors representing Washington DC.
The Constitution says only that they can't be sitting federal politicians or have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or given aid or comfort to its enemies".
The rest is up to state legislatures.
Some parties choose to hold a quiet convention to vote on their electors. Others just let the state's political committee make the choice, which is what led to Ms Gonzalez's out-of-the-blue phone call from Georgia's Democratic Party chairman.
The nominees are usually people the party wants to reward for service and loyalty. Hillary Clinton, for example, will be an elector for the state of New York.
Deborah Gonzalez believes she was chosen because it was Donald Trump's election in 2016 that sparked her foray into politics. She was elected as a state representative two years ago and is now running for district attorney.
"The fact that four years after that disastrous election, I get to be one of those electors voting for a new president and a new administration and a new direction forward ... it's an amazing full circle for me. A serious honour."
The 2020 election questioned the elector-choosing process
Once the two slates are set, the elector nominees have nothing to do but wait to see if their party's candidate wins the state in November.
Pennsylvania Republican Samuel DeMarco III says it wasn't too hard to keep his hopes in check.
He was asked by his state party to serve as an elector for President Trump but knew his shot was over when the state certified the results in Joe Biden's favour last week.
"It's just like buying a lottery ticket," he said.
"It's exciting but it means nothing if the numbers don't come up."
All but two states operate on a winner-take-all-system, meaning that even if a candidate wins, say, 40 per cent of the popular vote, they still get zero electors.
Samuel DeMarco, the would-be Republican elector from Pennsylvania, said it makes more sense for the integrity of the electoral college system for the Supreme Court to step in and decide disputes.
There's currently no reason to believe the electoral score, 306 for Joe Biden and 232 for Donald Trump, will change.
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to win the electoral college with 306 votes. (AP:Andrew Harnik)
But all the discussion around how it could change, if the conditions were right, has done its damage to Americans' trust.
"I don't think we should take away the vote of millions of people," Mr DeMarco said.
"But we need reform moving forward because there's a vast number of people in this country who don't believe this election was fair. That's a problem. That needs to be addressed."
The debate around the electoral college isn't going away soon
Republicans and Democrats alike believe that voting needs to be reformed, but they disagree on the fundamentals of how to go about it.
Mr DeMarco, for example, says that the state-based electoral college system is essential to ensuring "that each state's interests are represented".
"You essentially have 50 laboratories of democracy," he said.
"If you didn't have that, what would happen is the candidates would only campaign in places with big populations like California, Texas, Florida and New York".
[INSERT: From the post this post replies to "The main problem with the Electoral College today ia not, as both its supporters and detractors believe, the disproportionate power it gives smaller states. Those states do get a boost from their two Senate-based electoral votes, but that benefit pales in comparison to the real culprit: statewide winner-take-all laws. Under these laws, which states adopted to gain political advantage in the nation’s early years, even though it was never raised by the framers — states award all their electors to the candidate with the most popular votes in their state. The effect is to erase all the voters in that state who didn’t vote for the top candidate. P - Today, 48 states use winner-take-all. As a result, most are considered “safe,” that is, comfortably in hand for one party or the other. No amount of campaigning will change that. The only states that matter to either party are the “battleground” states — especially bigger ones like Florida and Pennsylvania, where a swing of a few thousand or even a few hundred votes can shift the entire pot of electors from one candidate to the other." https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=158172886]
Democrats generally argue that chasing electoral college votes means candidates only campaign in whatever states might swing — battleground spots like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina.
"Even though I'm an elector, I think the popular vote should be the only deciding factor," says Tim Stevens of Michigan.
Like other Democrats, he says it's unfair that a candidate can lose the popular vote by millions, like President Trump did in 2016, and still win the White House.
This time around, Mr Biden is leading President Trump in the popular vote by roughly six million — double Hillary Clinton's lead in 2016.
"Every vote counts. This wasn't close at all, and look at all the problems that are happening," Mr Stevens said.
"But here I am as an elector. So I'll just follow the law and let the legislators deal with it whenever they can."
Don't count on 'faithless electors'
Electors will gather in each state on December 14.
Americans cast their ballots in November, but the US president isn't officially confirmed until the electoral college casts votes on December 14. (Reuters: Bryan Woolston)
Most states hold the ceremony in their Capitol building. It's usually small, quiet and not open to the public.
It features a few patriotic accoutrements like the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance and a performance of the Star-Spangled Banner. Before the pandemic, there may be a few parties afterwards.
Deborah Gonzalez, one of the Democratic electors, said last week that she wasn't even sure of the time or place yet. The elections officials in her state of Georgia have been tied up with recounts.
"I've been telling my supporters that I will take them with me on the 14th as far as I can, and just try to be transparent with the process so that we can all learn exactly what happens," she said.
She said no one has contacted her urging her to vote against Mr Biden and become a "faithless elector". Not that she would consider it for a second if they tried.
Mr Stevens, the elector from Michigan, said he received three emails from individuals asking him to vote for President Trump.
"I told them to take me off the list," he said.
"The results were officially certified. There was no hanky panky."
There's also a law in Michigan — as there is in 32 other states — that bind electors to the will of the people.
The laws are somewhat toothless, but that seldom matters because the sense of duty in the electors is usually strong.
Faithless electors have never changed an election result.
The electoral college vote is going forward
The actual vote itself only takes minutes.
The votes from the electoral college will be taken to the United States Congress on January 6. (Reuters: Aaron P. Bernstein)
The electors are handed their ballot. They vote once for president. Once for vice-president. Then they sign the document and hand it in.
Just in case the ballots get destroyed before they can be counted, they are copied and sent to three different places: the National Archives, the local districts' offices and the president of the Senate.
It's that last office, which currently belongs to Vice-President Mike Pence, that is tasked with reading them and announcing the results when the Senate convenes on January 6.
Whichever candidates receive at least 270 votes are officially declared the winners.
But by that point the electors' duties are over. Their duty to democracy is done.
And they stop being such a source of fascination for about four years — until the big bureaucratic song-and-dance starts all over again.
VIDEO - 4m 15s The last four years under Donald Trump
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
