[EL] New research reports & Jamin Raskin's suggestion of focus on values of National Popular Vote plan
Rob Richie
rr at fairvote.org
Wed Jun 15 16:00:28 PDT 2011
Thanks for engaging on this topic, Derek. I did want to address two points.
First, relating to the supposed virtues of winning more states, in any close
presidential election today the Republican will win more states. (The
parties split the 13 smallest states, each taking six with New Hampshire as
a swing, but Republicans do better in mid-sized states). But that total
state advantage doesn't mean Republicans are helped by the current rules for
allocating electoral votes. In 2004, for example, George Bush won a
relatively comfortable victory in the national popular vote, earning more
than three million votes than John Kerry won. He also carried 31 states, far
more than Kerry's 20 states (counting D.C.) But if fewer than 60,000 votes
had flipped in Ohio, Kerry would have won with the same number of states
that Gore won in 2000- e.g, Bush still would have had a big edge in number
of states, but lost due to being outmaneuvered in the winner-take-all game.
Second, candidates do not win popular vote elections by "running up the
score" in their strongholds and ignoring other areas. They get votes where
they can -- you do voter ID calls and get your vote out even when it's in a
place you're going to lose. And for every anecdote you may have about
candidates being in their strongholds, there's a competing one of them
engaging in behavior they would never do with an Electoral College-type
system in states. Mark Warner, for example, famously focused on small towns
in rural Virginia in his 2001 bid for governor ending 8 years of Republican
rule. Hillary Clinton in her 2000 campaign for U.S. Senate spent large
amounts of time in upstate New York, earning votes in areas where she still
list to Lazio.
Add in dynamics relating to presidential elections, and I'm even more
skeptical of your argument. First, any group of people that want to make a
difference in a presidential campaign can do it wherever they live - no more
house parties to phone into Ohio. A campaign and its associated backers
would be foolish to not give such volunteers the tools necessary to be
involved. Second, states and state parties will be a big deal, with money
likely to flow into state parties to run coordinated campaigns to help
down-ballot races as well as the presidential contest. It's no accident that
some of the biggest backers of National Popular Vote are people on both
sides of the aisle who think their parties should be contesting all states
in "50 state strategy" kind of thinking and oppose channeling resources
into just swing districts and swing states. They prefer building your vote
wherever you can no matter where it is in relation to the 50% percentile in
the winner-take-all game.
Bottom line is that winner-take-all is like a cliff when it comes to
candidate attention. You go very quickly from getting a lot of attention to
absolutely nothing -- nada, not a single person polled, not a single GOTV
call, not a single ad designed to earn votes in that state, etc. With a
national popular vote, you'd have a relatively even continuum tied to votes
to be won-- to be sure, candidates would have some differences and some
different areas of concentration, but they'd be aware of potential votes
everywhere and supportive of people trying to get those votes.
Rob
On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Derek Muller <derek.muller at gmail.com>wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I had two thoughts, at the risk of re-opening an extended discussion.
>
> *First*, I'm not confident that the term "reach out" in the last paragraph
> describes how proponents of the Electoral College view the matter and
> doesn't necessarily, in my view, render Electoral College proponents' claims
> mere "misty-eyed mythology."
>
> The Electoral College requires broad consensus of States, regardless of
> whether or not a presidential candidate "reaches out" to member States in
> that consensus or not. So a small handful of States (or the residents
> therein) can't (as a practical matter, even though it's theoretically
> possible) decide the election. Consider 2000, in which Mr. Bush won 30
> States; and compare to 1960, in which Mr. Kennedy won just 23 States. The
> virtue, to proponents of the Electoral College, is marshalling the support
> of a number of these smaller sovereigns. Whether that winning candidate
> actively "reaches out" to the coalition of supporting States (by, for
> instance, attending local county fairs and eating fried foods for photo
> opportunities appearing in the daily newspaper) is somewhat beside the
> point.
>
> The spectre regarding a "handful of States" deciding an election means
> something exactly like 2000--Mr. Gore won just 21 of the 51 jurisdictions,
> but he won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes, spurred largely by a
> roughly 3 million vote margin in just New York and California.
>
> Now, whether we value winning a broad coalition of States as the Electoral
> College requires, or whether we value winning an outright plurality of the
> national popular vote in an "every vote equal" system, is, of course, an
> entirely different matter. But it doesn't render Electoral College
> proponents' views, in my view, a "mythology" simply because Mr. Bush didn't
> "reach out" to Wyoming in the process, or because Mr. Obama doesn't "reach
> out" to Vermont.
>
> *Second*, assuming that we value "reaching out" to a broad number of
> States and voters, is there any guarantee that in an "every vote equal"
> system, presidential candidates would be more inclined to "reach out" to a
> broader coalition, to "all" areas of the country?
>
> If anything, in statewide elections, "get out the vote" efforts by the
> major political parties are focused in the areas with their own supporters,
> and they don't "reach out" to very many voters in regions deemed partisan
> strongholds.
>
> Scanning the headlines from the last weeks of the Michigan gubernatorial
> campaign in 2010, for instance, the Republican candidate spent his time in
> places like Traverse City, Midland, and Grand Rapids, more
> Republican-leaning parts of the State; and the Democratic candidate spent
> his time in places like Detroit, Saginaw, and Ann Arbor, more
> Democratic-leaning parts of the State.
>
> I'm not convinced that a "winner take all" system, where every vote is
> treated equally, drives statewide candidates to the entirety of the State
> (but perhaps others have more concrete data than my isolated anecdote)--and,
> by extension, I'm not convinced that NPV or the like would drive Mr. Obama
> to visiting Utah. It might drive him, say, to visit Illinois more regularly,
> I suppose, but I don't see the pattern of "handful of States with many
> candidate visits" v. "handful of States ignored" would change.
>
> Best,
>
> Derek
>
>
> Derek T. Muller
>
> Visiting Assistant Professor of Law
>
> Penn State Dickinson School of Law
>
> Lewis Katz Building
>
> University Park, PA 16802
> 814-867-3411
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 4:43 PM, Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> In case anyone's going through withdrawal pains from not having a new
>> email about the National Popular Vote plan in their election law inbox every
>> 20 minutes, I wanted to share two analyses posted by FairVote this week that
>> speak to Jamie Raskin's useful suggestion on Saturday that some attention be
>> paid to the values of adopting the National Popular vote plan As a reminder,
>> Jamie wrote this:
>>
>> <<I suspect that the constitutional views of the participants in this
>> debate tend to mirror their political appreciation of a national popular
>> vote for president, and I do not exempt myself from this observation. It
>> might be more fruitful at this point, therefore, to shift to a discussion of
>> the values at stake. Should the president be elected in accordance with a
>> national popular vote or not? I simply cannot see why we would want to do
>> it any other way; after all this is how we elect governors, Senators, state
>> legislators and so on. And it is how other nations that have presidents
>> elect them. The nightmare scenarios that Tara imagines with the NPV plan
>> are a strikingly accurate depiction of the present chaotic regime in which
>> electoral mischief and corruption in one state can determine the results of
>> the presidential election for everyone else. When she predicts that, under
>> NPV, "a handful of states will have decided for everyone else that a tally
>> of individual votes controls the outcome of the election," it is hard to
>> think of a better description of the way that certain partisan state
>> officials have recently been able to decide our presidential elections for
>> the nation, the general will of the American people notwithstanding.>>
>>
>> I'll take Jamie up on his proposal. First articulated and supported in our
>> 2006* Presidential Elections Inequalit*y report, FairVote sees current
>> state rules governing allocation of electoral votes as having a perverse and
>> lasting impact on equality in our representative democracy. The number of
>> competitive states has dropped sharply since 1960, especially since 1988. At
>> the same time, the identify of those declining swing states has increased in
>> its consistency across elections. Tied to voters' evolving perceptions of
>> the parties and hardening of their own preferences in the choice between
>> those parties, you can see the same phenomenon play out out in congressional
>> elections, with increasing predictability of winners and margins based on
>> underlying partisanship (a trend frequently misunderstood to be a product of
>> gerrymandering and money in politics, each of which have a relatively slight
>> role compared to voter preferences and winner-take-all rules).
>>
>> Below are our two postings. The first one is particularly telling, showing
>> trends over time, To find out about specific states, download the
>> spreadsheet from the link and have fun with your own analysis. The second
>> posting is our latest "POTUS tracker" blog; it reports on President Obama's
>> travels and the undeniable impact that state winner-take-all rules have on
>> which states get personal attention from the president and his political
>> team (as also true of George Bush in 2001-2004, of course).
>>
>> Together these new reports refute quite effectively the misty-eyed
>> mythology that the current system leads presidents and presidential
>> candidates to reach out to all states. That is simply false -- and there is
>> no indication of that changing any time soon without adoption of the
>> National Popular Vote plan.
>>
>> - Rob Richie, FairVote
>>
>> #################
>> http://www.fairvote.org/not-your-parents-presidential-elections
>>
>> Not Your Parents' Presidential Elections: The Decline of Swing States,
>> 1960-2008
>> // Published June 13, 2011
>>
>> Download the Report
>>
>> <http://www.fairvote.org/assets/Uploads/DeclineofSwingStatesfrom1960-2008.xls>
>>
>> *Summary: *American presidential elections have undergone a dramatic
>> change in the past half century, especially since 1988.The number of swing
>> states (generously defined as ones projected to be won by 9% or less in a
>> year in which the major parties candidates split the national popular vote)
>> has dropped sharply since 1988, especially among our nation's largest and
>> smallest states.
>>
>> In 2008, only one of the 13 smallest states and only four of the 27
>> smallest states were swing states. This trend shows no indication of
>> changing, with all trends pointing to wider division -- indeed, in 2008 only
>> three of the smallest 13 states were within even a 15% partisanship
>> disparity.
>>
>> At the other end of the population spectrum, among our 11 largest
>> population states today, fewer than half were swing states in 2004 and 2008
>> -- down from 10 out of 11 of these states in the 1960 and the 1976
>> presidential elections and 8 of 11 in the 1988 election.
>>
>> None of the 2008 non-swing states are expected to become swing states in
>> 2012 even as some 2008 swing states may well move to non-swing state status,
>> which would continue a 50-year trend presented below.
>>
>> * Swing States (within 9%) by # 2008 Electoral Votes, 1960-2008** *
>> Year*
>>
>> *2008 Electoral Vote
>> 15 or more *
>> *2008 Electoral Votes
>> 9 to 14 * *2008 Electoral Votes
>> 5 to 8* *2008 Electoral Votes
>> 4 or less * *Total* 2008 5 of 11 states
>> 6 of 13 states
>> 3 of 14 states
>> 1 of 13 states
>> 15
>> 2004 4 of 11 6 of 13 5 of 14 1 of 13 16 1988 8 of 11 4 of 13 8
>> of 14 6 of 13 26 1976 10 of 11 6 of 13 8 of 14 5 of 13 29 1960 10
>> of 11 7 of 13 8 of 14 6 of 13 31**Washington, D.C. is included in all
>> years except 1960***
>>
>> *
>> * *Partisanship Disparity (P), All States, 1960-2008** Year P=<9%
>> 9%<P<20% P>=20% Notes 2008 15 19 17 13R & 4D landslide states 2004 16
>> 20 15 10R & 5D landslide states 1988 27 22 2 1R & 1D landslide states 1976
>> 29 14 8 5R & 3D landslide states 1960 31 13 6 2R & 4D landslide states
>>
>> **Washington, D.C. is included in all years except 1960*
>>
>> *
>> *
>>
>> *Of 11 largest population states with 15 or more electors in 2008*
>> *2008*: 5 states within 9% partisan division (FL,NC, NJ, OH, PA)
>> *2004*: 4 states within 9% partisan division (FL, MI, OH, PA)
>> *1988*: 8 states within 9% partisan division
>> *1976*: 10 states within 9% partisan division (all but GA)
>> *1960*: 10 states within a 9% partisan division (all but GA)
>>
>>
>>
>> *Of 13 mid-sized states with 9 to 14 electors in 2008*
>> *2008*: 6 states within 9% partisan division (VA,IN,MO,MN,WI,CO)
>> *2004*: 6 states within 9% partisan division
>> *1988*: 5 states within 9% partisan division
>> *1976*: 6 states within 9% partisan division
>> *1960*: 7 states within 9% partisan division
>>
>>
>>
>> *Of 14 smaller mid-sized states with 5 to 8 electors in 2008*
>> *2008*: 3 states within 9% partisan division (NM,IA,NV)
>> *2004*: 5 states within 9% partisan division
>> *1988*: 8 states within 9% partisan division
>> *1976*: 8 states within 9% partisan division
>> *1960*: 8 states within 9% partisan division
>>
>>
>>
>> *Of 13 smallest population states (including DC except in 1960) with 4 or
>> fewer electors in 2008*
>> *2008*: 1 state within 9% partisan division (NH /Only 2 more within 15%)
>> *2004*: 1 state within 9% partisan division (NH / Only 3 more within 15%)
>> *1988*: 6 states within 9% partisan division
>> *1976*: 5 states within a 9% partisan division
>> *1960*: 6 states within a 9% partisan division
>>
>> ############################
>> http://www.fairvote.org/presidential-visits-a-return-to-ohio
>>
>> Presidential Visits: A Return to Ohio and the Influence of the Electoral
>> System on Presidential Attention
>> by Katherine Sicienski<http://www.fairvote.org/list/author/Katherine_Sicienski> //
>> Published June 15, 2011
>>
>> *This blog is one of a series which tracks the movements of the President
>> using data from the Washington Post's ‘POTUS Tracker' to examine the effect
>> of battleground status on presidential attention. If you are interested in
>> examining the data, a copy of our compiled data (as of June 14th, 2011) can
>> be downloaded here<http://www.fairvote.org/assets/Blog1PresidentialTracker06-14-2011.xls>
>> .*
>>
>> - *What's new since our last blog<http://www.fairvote.org/presidential-visits-and-electoral-college/>
>> : *President Obama has held events for the first time in Puerto Rico,
>> but still has yet to visit South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah,
>> Nebraska, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, or Vermont.
>>
>>
>> - *Ten states with the most presidential events, during the Obama
>> presidency: *New York, Virginia, Maryland, Florida, California, Ohio,
>> Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Massachusetts. This remains unchanged
>> since our last entry.
>>
>>
>> - *States with 5 or more visits in 2011: *California, Florida,
>> Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia.
>>
>> On Friday, June 3rd, President Barack Obama delivered remarks at the
>> Chrysler Group Supplier Park in Toledo, Ohio. This was his 22nd event in the
>> state of Ohio since assuming the presidency. Yet since his inauguration in
>> 2009, the President has yet to hold a single event in ten states: South
>> Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Nebraska, Idaho, North Dakota,
>> South Dakota, or Vermont. Of these 10 states, all but Vermont went strongly
>> Republican in the 2008 presidential election.All but South Carolina (8.9%),
>> North Dakota (8.6%), and South Dakota (8.5%) were decided by lopsided
>> margins of 15% or greater.
>>
>> Ranked 6th for the number of events attended by the president, Ohio is
>> joined in the Top Ten for presidential attention by such 2008 swing states
>> as Virginia (2nd), Florida (4th) and Pennsylvania (8th). These four states -
>> each won by Obama in 2008 by less than 11% - are seen by some analysts as
>> representing the key to the president's re-election bid in 2012, with a
>> sweep for the president making it nearly impossible for a Republican to win.
>> So far in the President's first term they account for 25% of his total
>> events.
>>
>> Carried by President Obama by only 2.5% in 2008, Florida continues to
>> receive prominent attention in other ways as well. The New York Times<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/us/politics/10rico.html?_r=1&sq=lizette%20alvarez&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all> notes
>> that the 848,000 Puerto Rican residents of Florida may be the reason for the
>> President's June 14th visit to Puerto Rico. This will be the first official
>> Presidential visit to Puerto Rico since John F. Kennedy's in 1961, and it is
>> possibly due to the fact that the Florida residents "are not avowed
>> Democrats. This has turned them into pivotal swing voters in a crucial swing
>> state." Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democratic Network ,
>> suggests<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-courts-latino-vote-with-visit-to-puerto-rico/2011/06/14/AGmu8CVH_story.html> that,
>> "the large and growing Puerto Rican population in central Florida will be
>> key to winning the state in 2012."
>>
>> The other six states receiving the most attention from the President are
>> New York (1st), Maryland (3rd), California (5th), Illinois (7th),
>> Massachusetts (9th), and Wisconsin (10th). While won by Obama by 13% in
>> 2008, Wisconsin remains a potential swing state.It is traditionally
>> hard-fought, and Wisconsin's manufacturing economy was hit hard by the
>> economic recession. As to Maryland, it is within a few miles of the White
>> House, making it an easy state for events showcasing new polices, while
>> Illinois was represented by Obama in the Senate and is a relatively reliable
>> fundraising source.
>>
>> So, you might ask, why has Obama been to the firmly Democratic states of
>> New York, Massachusetts and California a combined 76 times? Notably, 23 of
>> those 76 events were fundraisers and these three states donated a total of
>> $276,896,336 during the 2008 election cycle, 34.3% of nationwide donations.
>> This calculation for the entire top ten among presidential visits makes that
>> percentage 60.9%.
>>
>> The President's political team seems to be doing similar math to many
>> political analysts, and has been allocating Presidential visits and prestige
>> to areas based on whether its electoral votes are in play in 2012. In
>> January 2011, the Cook Political Report<http://www.cookpolitical.com/charts/president/ev_scorecard_2011-01-13_15-41-48.php> narrowed
>> down the highly competitive swing states to a list of just seven: Colorado,
>> Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Four of the seven
>> are among the President's ten most visited states, and the other three are
>> in the top 25. The visits to these seven states (only 14% of the states and
>> 20% of the voting eligible population in 2008) amount to 99 visits or 26.8%
>> of the total visits. The bottom 25 states received 34 presidential visits or
>> 9.2% of the total visits. That works out to 1.36 visits for every state in
>> the bottom 25, with each of the battleground states receiving an average of
>> 14.14 visits.
>>
>> As the 2012 election approaches, it is likely that President Obama will
>> continue his electoral focus, visiting swing states where his 2008 margin of
>> victory was within reach of Republicans. Our nation's previous president
>> George Bush showed similar travel patterns in his first presidential term,
>> and his senior strategist Matthew Dowd admitted<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/us/republicans-convention-new-york-strategist-bush-backer-mixes-caution-with.html> that
>> the 2004 re-election campaign had not polled a single American living
>> outside of 18 potential swing states in the final two and a half years of
>> Bush's first-term. We have no doubt that states like South Carolina,
>> Arkansas, or Kansas matter to presidents, but given our state-by-state,
>> winner-take-all method of electing the president, political incentives for
>> spending energy on these states are nil. Until we have a national popular
>> vote <http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/> for president in which every
>> vote in every corner of the nation is equally meaningful, expect to see
>> White House political teams making similar calculations.
>>
>>
>> --
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> "Respect for Every Vote and Every Voice"
>>
>> Rob Richie
>> Executive Director
>>
>> FairVote
>> 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
>> Takoma Park, MD 20912
>> www.fairvote.org <http://www.fairvote.org/> rr at fairvote.org
>> (301) 270-4616
>>
>> Please support FairVote through action and tax-deductible donations -- see
>> http://fairvote.org/donate. For federal employees, please consider a
>> gift to us through the Combined Federal Campaign (FairVote's CFC number is
>> 10132.) Thank you!
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Respect for Every Vote and Every Voice"
Rob Richie
Executive Director
FairVote
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
Takoma Park, MD 20912
www.fairvote.org <http://www.fairvote.org> rr at fairvote.org
(301) 270-4616
Please support FairVote through action and tax-deductible donations -- see
http://fairvote.org/donate. For federal employees, please consider a gift
to us through the Combined Federal Campaign (FairVote's CFC number is
10132.) Thank you!
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