05-17-2018, 07:53 PM
(05-17-2018, 02:59 PM)PhilHos Wrote: While I agree that using the popular vote over the electoral college vote is preferrable to try to judge the voting population's opinion of candidate's policies, the problem with using the popular vote is that many voters vote for reasons OTHER than how they view a candidate's policies. Many voters voted for Clinton because of their intense dislike of Trump and how they viewed him as a person (and vice versa) and many voted for Clinton simply because she was a woman (and, I'm sure vice versa as well).
(05-17-2018, 03:19 PM)Millhouse Wrote: If I may chime in on this popular vote topic.
If the Prez elections were based on popular vote, we DO NOT know how the last election would have turned out. We cannot simply just look at the numbers of that election because they are simply skewed from a political science perspective.
The reason why they are skewed is because the campaigns of both parties objective was to target for electoral wins, which is a big difference of campaign strategy instead of aiming for the popular vote.
Now how much difference there would be instead, its near impossible to tell. Maybe not much at all for all I know. But the point is that the campaigns would have been ran differently if the election was a popular vote, hence the numbers would have varied.
Both of you make valid arguments. However, as my contention from the onset was that the popular vote has a stronger correlation to public opinion than the EC results they do not invalidate my own argument. I stated that there is not a +1.0 correlation, only that it is stronger than the EC results. Which means that using the EC results from an election in which the EC winner did not win the popular vote is not a sound argument for public opinion being on the side of the EC winner.
I never even argued that the election was proof that the public had the opinions I stated they do, that information comes from polling. My only argument was what I have stated in this post.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
