[EL] Will Republicans embrace the National Vote Planin 2012? / Big cities

[John Koza]

Jack Santucci says: “Republicans are more spread out, it's harder to campaign in a spread-out setting than in a city, Democrats inhabit cities, so NPV inherently favors Democrats.”

 

The facts don’t support this statement.

 

The vast majority of expenditures in presidential campaigns are for television, and television is premium-priced in major cities. That is, it costs considerably more to reach one voter in a major media market than to reach one voter a small-town or rural market.  

 

 

Dr. John R. Koza, Chair

National Popular Vote

Box 1441

Los Altos Hills, California 94023 USA

Phone: 650-941-0336

Fax: 650-941-9430

Email:  <mailto:john at johnkoza.com> john at johnkoza.com

URL:  <http://www.johnkoza.com> www.johnkoza.com 

URL:  <http://www.NationalPopularVote.com> www.NationalPopularVote.com

 

From: Jack Santucci [mailto:jms346 at georgetown.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 12:17 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Will Republicans embrace the National Vote Planin 2012?

 

NPV messaging has always acknowledged (i.e., since 2006 or 2007, a.k.a. the beginning of the effort) that the "partisan impact" of the American electoral college varies from election to election.

I put "partisan impact" in quotation marks because the effects of institutions are difficult to talk about without some reference to the social/demographic/organizational factors that "condition" said effects.

And it is similarly difficult to talk about any of those social/demographic/organizational factors as inherent to one or another major party. For example, the Republican party is "rural," rural voters concentrate in states that benefit from malapportionment, so NPV is a Democratic thing. Or the other version: Republicans are more spread out, it's harder to campaign in a spread-out setting than in a city, Democrats inhabit cities, so NPV inherently favors Democrats. All this talk is grossly oversimplified because the parties are fluid coalitions. Even that point is oversimplified, since the notion of "coalition" assumes voters for whom the salience of issues does not vary and/or is not manipulable.

Strong arguments for or against NPV look at the institutions alone. What is the value of fragmenting the electorate? What is the value of delegate malapportionment? What are the implications for election administration, and are those implications good or bad? How about in the long run? So on, so forth.

Jack Santucci

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 2:57 PM, <sean at impactpolicymanagement.com> wrote:

The question can be asked the other way too - would Democrats, generally somewhat more favorable to effectively ditching the Electoral College through the NPV effort, suddenly rediscover the wisdom of the states as politically sovereign entities selecting the President?

Sean Parnell
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael McDonald <mmcdon at gmu.edu>
Sender: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
Date: Tue, 22 May 2012 14:03:48
To: <law-election at uci.edu>
Reply-To: mmcdon at gmu.edu
Subject: [EL] Will Republicans embrace the National Vote Planin 2012?

There is an interesting early dynamic emerging in the polling this cycle.
Romney is neck and neck with Obama nationally, but Obama is leading in key
states for the race for the Electoral College.

Some reasons why this may be true is that the economy is doing better in key
battleground states, while Romney hurt himself with his auto-bailout
position in states like Ohio. The economy is doing the worst in some urban
Democratic strongholds, so Obama may be able to lose support in these areas
while still winning these states by a comfortable margin. And Obama does
very poorly in deep red states. In other words, there does not appear to be
a uniform national  vote swing from the 2008 to 2012 election.

This raises interesting questions: if Obama beats Romney in the Electoral
College but loses in the popular vote, will Republicans change their tune
about the National Vote Plan? Could we see strategic Republican state
governments sign on to the NPV in the waning days of the general election if
the dynamic I note persists?

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor, George Mason University
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

                            Mailing address:
(o) 703-993-4191             George Mason University
(f) 703-993-1399             Dept. of Public and International Affairs
mmcdon at gmu.edu               4400 University Drive - 3F4
http://elections.gmu.edu     Fairfax, VA 22030-4444



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