[EL] Will Republicans embrace the National Vote Planin 2012? / Small states

Wed May 23 08:53:04 PDT 2012

Jack Santucci says: “The Republican party is ‘rural,’ rural voters concentrate in states that benefit from malapportionment, so NPV is a Democratic thing ….”

The facts don’t support this statement.

The Republicans are not advantaged by the small states because the small states are not Republican bastions.  In the last six presidential elections (1988 through 2008), the 13 least-populous states (i.e., those with three or four electoral votes) have divided 6-Democratic, 6-Republican, and 1 battleground state.  The six consistently-Republican small states are Alaska, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The six consistently Democratic small states are Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont. New Hampshire has the only battleground state among the smallest states.  Not only are the small states not Republican bastions, they actually are skewed in favor of the Democratic Party.  John Kerry’s 444,115-vote lead in the six reliably Democratic low-population states yielded him 21 electoral votes.  George W. Bush’s considerably larger 650,421-vote lead in the six reliably Republican low-population states in 2004 yielded him 19 electoral votes.  If these state boundaries had been recently drawn, the Democrats would be accused of gerrymandering. 

Moreover, the small states don’t benefit from the apparent malapportionment of electoral votes in their favor. In fact, the small states are the most disadvantaged group of states because of the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. The reason is that they tend to be one-party states in presidential elections and are therefore ignored. The 12 least-populous non-battleground states have a combined population of 11.5 million. Coincidentally, Pennsylvania has almost the same number of people as these 12 states. Because of the bonus of two electoral votes that every state receives, the 12 least-populous non-battleground states have 40 electoral votes, whereas Pennsylvania has only about half as many (20).  However, political power does not arise from the number of electoral votes that a state possesses, but, instead, from whether the state is a closely divided battleground state. Pennsylvania received 40 of the 300 post-convention campaign events in 2008,  whereas the 12 least-populous non-battleground states received only three.  The 12 least-populous non-battleground states receive almost no visits, advertising, polling, or policy consideration by presidential candidates because the outcomes in those states are foregone conclusions. In contrast, the winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes makes the 12 million people in Pennsylvania the center of attention. Under a national popular vote, a vote in a small state would suddenly become as valuable as a vote in Pennsylvania and candidates would have to pay attention to issues of concern to them.

Note that the 12 least-populous non-battleground states are not ignored because they are small. Presidential candidates pay considerable attention to the one closely divided small state. New Hampshire (with four electoral votes) received 12 of the 300 post-convention campaign general election campaign events in 2008. (See section 10.4 of “Every Vote Equal” book for details at www.every-vote.equal.com ).  Similarly, Nevada received 12 visits and Nevada 8. 

The same conclusions apply to the 25 least-populous states. The Democratic and Republican popular vote in the 25 smallest states is almost tied (9.9 million versus 9.8 million). They divided 13–12 in favor of the Republicans in 2008, and their electoral votes divided 58–57. 18 of the 25 smallest states received no attention at all from presidential campaigns.  Only four received more than 2 post-convention campaign events, namely New Hampshire (12 events), New Mexico (8 events), Nevada (12 events), and Iowa (7 events). These 4 states accounted for 39 of the 43 events.  The 25 smallest states together (with 155 electoral votes) received 43 post-convention campaign events. In contrast, Ohio (with only 20 electoral votes) received 62 of the 300 post-convention campaign events (and Florida received 46 and Pennsylvania received 40).

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:
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(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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