While that may be true in the abstract, it falls apart when the real world is introduced.
Trump always fares poorly against “unspecified opponent,” because people know he is distasteful, and because about 60% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. The problem is that people also hate the individual Democrats, and come to distrust them more and more once all the internet propaganda and attack ads begin to expose their real and imagined flaws. When the question progresses from the general “Trump vs unspecified” to the specific, i.e. “Trump vs Warren,” many people admit they will hold their noses and vote for Trump.
Trump is currently running ahead of Warren and Buttigieg and is about even with Harris, for example, so the “55% against him” concept is malleable. He is running 6-8 points behind Biden at the moment.
The bulk of the US population lives on the coasts. Apparently in your view a minority should elect the President….because…?
I’m a life long New Yorker. However my way of life is very different than those who live in the Deep South or the Midwest. I’m not a trump supporter, however I do support live and let live. Let states and local municipalities tailor their laws to best serve their constituents.
Unfortunately for the coastal liberal elite, San Fran, Los Angeles, Chicago, and nyc don’t elect the president. Nor should they. There are 50 states and all have a voice, an agenda, and a need for compromise. The system works for all Americans. And yes, that includes your neighbors who voted for trump.
Yawn.
I’m your worst nightmare. An Ivy League educated, successful New Yorker who doesn’t believe New York should dictate how the rest of the country lives. We have New York State and local municipalities to protect our interests. I’m not a trump supporter however you, my friend, are a partisan hack. Your hatred and divisiveness are the problem. Get a job, a dog, a hobby… something.
Ivy league? Obviously you are either a legacy student or your parents gave a large donation for you to get in.
Your apparent ignorance behind the formation of the electoral college and your logical fallacy of normalcy bias clearly indicate you aren’t very intelligent.
I often prefer to leave comments vague like that in response to vague replies like Don gave to draw him out, but these are two things I’d like to comment on.
It always amazes me how ignorant Americans are of their own history, especially since it is taught throughout school. The Electoral College was not devised to protect the small states, it was designed, depending on your perspective, to protect either the slave states or the balance of power.
The electoral college is, of course, something of a mess. On the one hand, the Founders left it up to the states (sort of) whether the electoral college voters should be bound to a candidate, on the other hand, the electoral college voters were appointed by the various candidates running for President.
That aside, the Founders did not believe there would be political parties (more like they had willful blindness) and they believed many individuals would run for President. So, they wanted a process in which the President would ultimately be decided by the U.S House as they believed that no candidate would get a majority of electoral college votes. So, the purpose of the electoral college was to winnow the choice in front of Congress to the top three candidates in the electoral college vote.
The Congressional vote was based on each state receiving one vote. However, this was not for the purpose of protecting small states, it was to ensure that neither the slave states nor the free states could dominate the Presidency. Balance of power politics between the slave and free states was very important and was behind this and the Missouri compromise (for every additional free state there would be an additional slave state.)
In response to ‘Don’s’ comment of ‘hatred and divisiveness.’ I don’t know how much Don knows about me because I’ve noticed that a lot of right wingers post here for a brief period of time and then are never seen again. I suspect that some of them post under new names, and ‘Don’ could be one of those.
I’ve also never understood the concern of so many people, especially those on the left, for a ‘uniter.’ Politics is inherently divisive. People have competing ideas and there are scarce resources and the electoral system is how these things (temporarily) get decided.
What should matter is not that all or most people should somehow magically all be united, but:
1.that political leaders not bate people to cause division for partisan purposes.
2.that political leaders be as honest as possible, so that when one side naturally (temporarily) loses out, that they feel, as much as possible, that the process has at least been fair.
Don’s ‘normalcy bias’ clearly comes in here in not appreciating that Trump is off the charts in terms of going out of his way to cause division and conflict and is off the charts in terms of his dishonesty (and even more so, his ignorance.)
The point of this brief history lesson on the electoral college being that this:
I think there is a valid argument over both the positive and negative aspects of a mass popular vote vs. a vote that takes into account regions, but this argument is usually sidetracked by the false claim that the electoral college was put in place by the Founders to protect the small states, and that, therefore, any alternative is anti-Constitution.
In fact, as I’ve shown, the electoral college was a process to ultimately allow the U.S House decide the President from a choice of three in a manner that was designed to ensure the balance of power between slave states and free states.
The U.S House has not chosen the President in nearly 200 years and the institution of slavery is gone. The reasons for the electoral college no longer exist and so holding the Constitution as some ultimate high ground argument in favor of the electoral college is a completely bogus argument.
Wait – people who support Trump have a need for compromise? Do they know that? Does Mitch McConnell know that? Does Trump know that? Because frankly, I think that would be news to all of them. Their motto, ever since Bill Clinton was president, has been “NO COMPROMISE”. That was what they did for 8 years under Clinton and 8 years under Obama, anyway.
Seems about right. 53%+ voted for Clinton in 2016
Your overall point is correct in that 53.9% voted against Trump, which meshes nicely with the claim made in the article. They did not all vote for Hillary, however. It’s impossible to say how many of the third-party voters actually would have voted for Trump if they had only Trump and Hillary to choose from.
I know exactly what I said.
The voters preferences were about 53% Clinton to 41% Trump.
The voting machines reported 48% to 46%.
Ahh. I see.
Hillary was polling about 3-3.5 points ahead of Trump just before the election, and she finished about two ahead. That small variation between the polls and the outcome can easily be explained by two things: (1) Trump was rising quickly in the polls at the end; (2) the third party candidates lost support from poll to reality, and Trump picked up more of those voters than Hillary.
Exit polling showed that Hillary’s edge was 1.7 points, but the voting machines showed 2.1.
How did you calculate that 12-point differential?
Hmmm…
I’ll get back to you.