Entries Categorized with "National Popular Vote"
- 30 of 140 results
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The Best Electoral College Stories of the 2012 Presidential Campaign
- Posted: January 15, 2013
- Author(s): Devin McCarthy
- Categories: Home, National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections
With the campaign season behind us, this post revisits the news stories of the 2012 presidential campaign that best captured the the distortions and unfairness caused by the winner-take-all Electoral College system.
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Statewide Recounts Remain Scarce: Zero in 2012
- Posted: December 21, 2012
- Author(s): Mollie Hailey
- Categories: Home, National Popular Vote
There were no recounts out of more than 400 statewide elections in 2012. FairVote's research of all statewide general elections from 2000 to 2012 underscores how rarely such recounts take place and how little they affect victory margins. Post-election audits are a better way to uncover the kind of major fraud or error that might actually change an election outcome.
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Electoral College Chaos: How Republicans Could Put a Lock on the Presidency
- Posted: December 13, 2012
- Author(s): Rob Richie
- Categories: Home, National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections
Our current Electoral College rules allow for partisan manipulation of outcomes. FairVote's director Rob Richie explains how if Republicans in 2011 had abused their monopoly control of state government in several key swing states and passed new laws for allocating electoral votes, the exact same votes cast in the exact same way in the 2012 election would have converted Barack Obama's advantage of nearly five million popular votes and 126 electoral votes into a resounding Electoral College defeat.
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Pennsylvania Senate Leader Pileggi Wrong on Prescription for Electoral College Reform
- Posted: December 3, 2012
- Author(s): Rob Richie
- Categories: National Popular Vote, FairVote
Pennsylvania's senate majority leader Dominic Pileggi is backing a new plan to divide his state's electoral votes in the 2016 presidential race. While supported as a means to provide a fair reflection of state voters in the Electoral College, the plan has big downsides -- and falls far short of the National Popular Vote plan. Sen. Pileggi should back the National Popular Vote plan and apply his interest in proportional representation to elections for Congress and the state legislature.
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Electoral College Favored One Party Over the Other in the 2012 Election
- Posted: November 21, 2012
- Author(s): Rob Richie, Andrea Levien
- Categories: National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections
FairVote's analyses of congressional elections show a definitive tilt towards the Republican party, grounded in winner-take-all voting rules and the geographic distribution of Republican and Democratic voters. However, on the presidential level there is currently a distinct Democratic advantage, also resulting from winner-take-all rules. By reforming unfair electoral structures, we can eliminate this bias on both the legislative and executive levels.
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Magic Numbers: Small Vote Shifts in Key States Could Have Altered Electoral College Outcomes
- Posted: November 16, 2012
- Author(s): Andrea Levien
- Categories: Home, National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections
One commonly cited benefit of the Electoral College is that, even when the national popular vote for president is close, it creates a decisive victory for one candidate or the other, giving the winner more legitimacy. However, these "decisive" victories are often more tenuous than they seem. There are plenty of elections in which slight vote shifts in key states would have changed the winner of the Electoral College vote, despite the original winners' significantly larger leads in the nationwide vote.
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Tracking Presidential Campaign Field Operations
- Posted: November 14, 2012
- Author(s): Andrea Levien
- Categories: Presidential Tracker, Presidential Elections, National Popular Vote
The most visible ways that Democratic and Republican presidential candidates show favoritism for swing states are through public campaign events and ad spending. However, tracking where candidates opened field offices is another useful method of measuring candidate attention. Unsurprisingly, field office placement in the 2012 presidential election showed a strong bias towards swing states.
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Presidential Campaign Attention: Why Most States Aren’t Worth Any Despite Their Generosity
- Posted: November 1, 2012
- Author(s): Presidential Tracker, Andrea Levien
- Categories: Presidential Tracker, Presidential Elections, National Popular Vote
For the past two months, FairVote has been highlighting the inequality that the winner-take-all method of allocating electoral votes perpetuates: swing states are targetted and safe states are not. However, another type of inequality to consider is the inequality this rule creates between wealthy and non-wealthy safe state residents. Wealthy residents in every state are targetted at fundrairsers, as they provide a good portion of the money funding the campaigns. Low and middle income swing state residents are targetted because they provide votes that could swing a state to one candidate or another. Low and middle income safe state residents, on the other hand, are out of luck.
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Yet Again, Just Three States Draw The Majority of Campaign Attention: Presidential Tracker Update, October 17, 2012
- Posted: October 17, 2012
- Author(s): Presidential Tracker, Andrea Levien
- Categories: Presidential Tracker, National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections
This election cycle, the three largest battleground states - Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, together representing about 12.5% of the nation - are receiving the majority of campaign attention as measured by both ad spending and campaign events with presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Florida and Ohio were among the three states in the same position in 2004 and 2008, but Virginia has displaced Pennsylvania as the third most coveted state.
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Election Simulations From 1960-2008 Show That Electoral College Rules Don’t Help Either Party, but Do Harm American Democracy
- Posted: October 12, 2012
- Author(s): Rob Richie, Andrea Levien
- Categories: Presidential Elections, National Popular Vote
By simulating 50-50 ties in the national popular vote for president, FairVote demonstrates that the Electoral College does not systematically harm or help either major party. We also demonstrate that in six of the past thirteen elections, a near tie in the national popular vote would have elected the wrong winner.