I got a comment on Facebook to the effect that Trump did not win the election because he did not win the popular vote. It is a pretty common argument, expressed among other ways in the 'he's not my president' material. An associated argument is the electoral college is antiquated and unfair. I keep, however, a database on US presidential elections, and so it is possible to answer both these assertions with data along with a bit of Civics 101.
First the civics. The United States is not a democracy. Never has been. We are a federated republic. For those unfamiliar with the difference, in a democracy there is a popular vote for national offices. In a federated republic each state is semi-autonomous, sharing (federal cooperation) certain governmental functions in a central government which for those functions only has hegemony over all the states. In such a government each state has the vote for the national leadership office (on our case, the presidency). Our Founders made this partially representational, as opposed to a one state-on vote system as in Germany, by giving each state votes in accordance with its population, using the number of representatives (determined by population) plus its senators.
The concept of a federated republic of independent states has been lost in the constant assertion of democracy. Unless we are to change the very structure of our government, which we can do by constitutional amendment, our presidential elections are not and never have been democratic. Indeed, our Founders feared unfettered democracy as the path to demagoguery, rightly in my opinion.
Now, with regard to winning the popular vote, I have compiled, beginning in 2008, a database of US presidential elections going back to 1828. I chose this date because it is the origin of the modern Democratic Party, and encompasses the birth of the modern Republican Party. The raw data comes from one of the great on line resources- Dave Leip's Atlas of US elections. I strongly recommend this site for detailed and fascinating information on US elections. Here is my database sorted by election date. For those interested, email me for the database, and I will send it to you.
US elections by date-
Here are the elections sorted by popular vote margin (plurality)-
Here is the data sorted by popular vote percentage-
Finally, here is the data by electoral vote percentage-
Several things can immediately be seen as simple data facts.
First, Trump is nowhere near the lowest popular vote percentage in history. That distinction belongs to.....Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Trump is not even in the lowest 10% of elections since 1828. Among those lower than Trump are Clinton in 1992 and Wilson in 1912, the others being Nixon in 1968 and Buchanan in 1856. All these results happened in years with strong third party candidacies. If one is to assert that Trump is not a legitimate winner because he did not win the popular vote then neither are any of those with lesser proportions of the vote. This is, of course, exactly what the South DID do in secession in 1860.
Of the 48 election winners since 1828, 15 or 31% did not get half the vote. Thus the idea that not getting a majority makes you illegitimate as president is just wrong. Among those not garnering 50% is Clinton (both times).
Equally striking is how close most elections are. The largest popular landslide in history got only 61% of the vote, and only 5, or 10%, have ever gotten that high. 10 more elections, another 25%, were won with 50 or 51% of the vote, in other words a plurality of less than 2%. The sour argument that only 77,000 votes separated Clinton from the presidency could have been made by Nixon in 1960, or Dewey in 1948.
Trump is not even the lowest plurality in history, that was Rutherford Hayes in 1876, and he won without a significant third party running. Trump is second to last. Some like to say that Trump lost the popular vote by millions, which is a great talking point, except that it has no denominator and so has no statistical meaning. Trump lost the popular vote by 2%. Kennedy won it by 0.2%. 8 elections, 18%, have been won by less than 2%. This is hardly a rare phenomenon. Seen another way, only 5 elections have been won by more than a 20% plurality. A close election is much more common than a blowout.
A large plurality also does not mean a good president. Of the 5 largest plurality winners, one resigned before impeachment, one was so unpopular in 4 years he declined to run again, and two are considered among the poorest presidents in history.
Finally, electoral vote margins are larger than popular vote margins. This is a reflection of the workings of the electoral college but also of how party affiliation is distributed. If party voters are inefficiently distributed the loser may run up a large popular margin while losing the electoral college badly. This is what happened for Hayes, who lost the popular vote by 3% but got 50% of the electoral vote, or Polk, who got 62% of the electoral college with a plurality of 1.5%, the best result for any plurality less than 2%. If we claim the electoral college is invalid because of Trump's win then we must also declare Kennedy an illegitimate president, since he got 50% of the vote but won. His is the electoral vote result closest to Trump's.
What really strikes me from the data is our current society. American elections are far more likely to be close than landslides, yet there has always been an orderly transfer of power. There have been only two exceptions- Lincoln in 1860, whose win sparked secession and war, and Trump in 2016, which sparked protests and riots. It is not so much the closeness of the win, which is not historic in any way, but rather the stridency and hysteria of the reaction since 2016. No other losing party's supporters have screamed so loudly that the winner is illegitimate, that there is a constitutional crisis because they lost, that the winner is a dictator, a fascist, etc, etc.
When Nixon lost in 1960 there was very strong evidence of voter fraud in Illinois, which was won by Kennedy by virtue of Chicago's vote. Nixon's attorneys urged him to sue, as Gore did in 2000. Nixon refused, saying it was more important that Americans have faith in the process than that he become president. The losers of 2016 should remember this powerful example.
It is not Trump's win that threatens our institutions, it is the reaction of the losers.
Ted
First the civics. The United States is not a democracy. Never has been. We are a federated republic. For those unfamiliar with the difference, in a democracy there is a popular vote for national offices. In a federated republic each state is semi-autonomous, sharing (federal cooperation) certain governmental functions in a central government which for those functions only has hegemony over all the states. In such a government each state has the vote for the national leadership office (on our case, the presidency). Our Founders made this partially representational, as opposed to a one state-on vote system as in Germany, by giving each state votes in accordance with its population, using the number of representatives (determined by population) plus its senators.
The concept of a federated republic of independent states has been lost in the constant assertion of democracy. Unless we are to change the very structure of our government, which we can do by constitutional amendment, our presidential elections are not and never have been democratic. Indeed, our Founders feared unfettered democracy as the path to demagoguery, rightly in my opinion.
Now, with regard to winning the popular vote, I have compiled, beginning in 2008, a database of US presidential elections going back to 1828. I chose this date because it is the origin of the modern Democratic Party, and encompasses the birth of the modern Republican Party. The raw data comes from one of the great on line resources- Dave Leip's Atlas of US elections. I strongly recommend this site for detailed and fascinating information on US elections. Here is my database sorted by election date. For those interested, email me for the database, and I will send it to you.
US elections by date-
Here are the elections sorted by popular vote margin (plurality)-
Here is the data sorted by popular vote percentage-
Finally, here is the data by electoral vote percentage-
Several things can immediately be seen as simple data facts.
First, Trump is nowhere near the lowest popular vote percentage in history. That distinction belongs to.....Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Trump is not even in the lowest 10% of elections since 1828. Among those lower than Trump are Clinton in 1992 and Wilson in 1912, the others being Nixon in 1968 and Buchanan in 1856. All these results happened in years with strong third party candidacies. If one is to assert that Trump is not a legitimate winner because he did not win the popular vote then neither are any of those with lesser proportions of the vote. This is, of course, exactly what the South DID do in secession in 1860.
Of the 48 election winners since 1828, 15 or 31% did not get half the vote. Thus the idea that not getting a majority makes you illegitimate as president is just wrong. Among those not garnering 50% is Clinton (both times).
Equally striking is how close most elections are. The largest popular landslide in history got only 61% of the vote, and only 5, or 10%, have ever gotten that high. 10 more elections, another 25%, were won with 50 or 51% of the vote, in other words a plurality of less than 2%. The sour argument that only 77,000 votes separated Clinton from the presidency could have been made by Nixon in 1960, or Dewey in 1948.
Trump is not even the lowest plurality in history, that was Rutherford Hayes in 1876, and he won without a significant third party running. Trump is second to last. Some like to say that Trump lost the popular vote by millions, which is a great talking point, except that it has no denominator and so has no statistical meaning. Trump lost the popular vote by 2%. Kennedy won it by 0.2%. 8 elections, 18%, have been won by less than 2%. This is hardly a rare phenomenon. Seen another way, only 5 elections have been won by more than a 20% plurality. A close election is much more common than a blowout.
A large plurality also does not mean a good president. Of the 5 largest plurality winners, one resigned before impeachment, one was so unpopular in 4 years he declined to run again, and two are considered among the poorest presidents in history.
Finally, electoral vote margins are larger than popular vote margins. This is a reflection of the workings of the electoral college but also of how party affiliation is distributed. If party voters are inefficiently distributed the loser may run up a large popular margin while losing the electoral college badly. This is what happened for Hayes, who lost the popular vote by 3% but got 50% of the electoral vote, or Polk, who got 62% of the electoral college with a plurality of 1.5%, the best result for any plurality less than 2%. If we claim the electoral college is invalid because of Trump's win then we must also declare Kennedy an illegitimate president, since he got 50% of the vote but won. His is the electoral vote result closest to Trump's.
What really strikes me from the data is our current society. American elections are far more likely to be close than landslides, yet there has always been an orderly transfer of power. There have been only two exceptions- Lincoln in 1860, whose win sparked secession and war, and Trump in 2016, which sparked protests and riots. It is not so much the closeness of the win, which is not historic in any way, but rather the stridency and hysteria of the reaction since 2016. No other losing party's supporters have screamed so loudly that the winner is illegitimate, that there is a constitutional crisis because they lost, that the winner is a dictator, a fascist, etc, etc.
When Nixon lost in 1960 there was very strong evidence of voter fraud in Illinois, which was won by Kennedy by virtue of Chicago's vote. Nixon's attorneys urged him to sue, as Gore did in 2000. Nixon refused, saying it was more important that Americans have faith in the process than that he become president. The losers of 2016 should remember this powerful example.
It is not Trump's win that threatens our institutions, it is the reaction of the losers.
Ted
Your last sentence... profound!
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