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Electoral College Decision Tree

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Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#261

Post by confidantlake »

rubidium wrote: post #77
greenpizza13 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so terrifying. If you start giving Trump states which are tossups, like FL, the others which were tossups begin to lean red. Choose red for those and you're done. At that point you're in 2016 territory. We have an extremely broken election system.

The electoral college is designed (from the start) to prevent the larger, more populous states from dominating the country. Seems to be working as designed. And doing a good job as a system. Politics is extremely broken, yes. But I don’t think the electoral college is the fault.

This argument never made sense. In a one person one vote system, the concept of a state never comes into play. It is a national election, states are irrelevant.

Under the electoral college system, states actually come into play. There could be a case where a state grows large enough in population to get 51% of the electoral votes. If that state had a winner take all system, then that state would choose every president. It would 100% dominate, non of the other states would matter.

The electoral college is truly a terrible system, unless the founders wanted Florida to decide every election.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#262

Post by greenpizza13 »

dragontamer wrote: post #55
greenpizza13 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so terrifying. If you start giving Trump states which are tossups, like FL, the others which were tossups begin to lean red. Choose red for those and you're done. At that point you're in 2016 territory. We have an extremely broken election system.

You're not thinking like a pollster. Florida is currently projected to be Biden's win. So what happens if Trump wins Florida? It means the polls were wrong. Which means, you'd have to reconsider the state-polls in all the other states with that new information: that the country is slightly redder than polls today suggest. If Trump wins Florida, then there's a "hidden vote", so to speak, that's pushing Trump's victory…

That’s precisely how I viewed it as well. What I was saying is it’s terrifying that a swing like that implies a larger swing.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#264

Post by bleepblorp »

refurb wrote: post #247
bleepblorp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protecting against the tyranny of the majority is just a politer term for enabling the tyranny of the minority. The systemic disenfranchisement of the majority of the American population--through the electoral college, senate, and supreme court-- is precisely why so much of American politics is broken. Forcing the the majority to live under the rules set by a minority that has a completely different way of life does…

This arguement honestly sounds like “we need to change the system so my side isn’t denied power”. No doubt if the situation was reversed you’d be arguing for them.

The United States was founded on rejecting a system that vested lawful power with the British government and denied power to the colonists. Were the founding fathers wrong to declare independence to ensure that their 'side' was not denied power?

The entire principle of popular sovereignty, as exercised through representative democracy, is that leaders are selected according to the wishes of the the majority of the people. Minority rule--no matter how it is codified or how long it has been in effect--is incompatible with this principle.

America can be either a country ruled by a Republican party answerable accountable only to rural interests or it can be a democracy. It cannot be both.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#265

Post by runawaybottle »

confidantlake wrote: post #261
rubidium wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The electoral college is designed (from the start) to prevent the larger, more populous states from dominating the country. Seems to be working as designed. And doing a good job as a system. Politics is extremely broken, yes. But I don’t think the electoral college is the fault.

This argument never made sense. In a one person one vote system, the concept of a state never comes into play. It is a national election, states are irrelevant. Under the electoral college system, states actually come into play. There could be a case where a state grows large enough in population to get 51% of the electoral votes. If that state had a winner take all system, then that state would choose every presiden…

Eh, we had a bifurcation of slave states and free states, and a legacy of that in the segregated south. Do you know what would have happened if the majority of the population lived in those states? You’d have a racist executive branch for decades. Popular vote working exactly as you want, but you wouldn’t be singing the popular vote tune when what’s popular is not stuff you believe in.

Just some quick googling, not a vetted source: http://inside.sfuhs.org/dept/history/US_History_reader/Chapt...

Those populations looked similar and could have gone either way earlier (hindsight being 20/20, major industrial centers could have emerged in the south). The popular vote in that case may have never led to a Lincoln.

In other words, just because there’s a giant population in South with certain regional values, doesn’t mean you get to win every election. The same is true for coastal cities in America now. I do think certain states need more electoral votes added at this point like New York and California.

The same way you can fuck them with the popular vote today is the same way they can fuck you with it in the future.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#266

Post by djrogers »

wtallis wrote: post #86
nradov wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are numerous anecdotal reports of Trump supporters refusing to answer polls or giving intentionally misleading answers. But it's inherently impossible to know how prevalent that phenomenon is. Pollsters can't force voters to respond or give truthful answers.

> But it's inherently impossible to know how prevalent that phenomenon is. There was a lot of analysis after the 2016 election cycle about the "shy Trump voter" hypothesis, and it really didn't hold up, and continues to not hold up with under the data available from this election cycle. It is completely unreasonable to postulate that the effect would be drastically bigger this year, after four years of Trump actually…

> There was a lot of analysis after the 2016 election cycle about the "shy Trump voter" hypothesis, and it really didn't hold up, and continues to not hold up with under the data available from this election cycle

I do find it rather humorous that people would claim this isn’t a thread where multiple people have been downvoted (in some cases to death) for stating or implying that they will be voting for Trump. None of the comments I’m referencing are particularly contentious, aggressive, or otherwise offensive, and yet here we are...

I don’t know what it’s effect is on polls, but in some parts of the country there is a definite reticence on the part of one side or the other to admit it.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#267

Post by austincheney »

bloody-crow wrote: post #145

The mere existence of this tool highlights the complexity and opaqueness of the electoral college system compared to the popular vote. You can't expect a layperson to have a somewhat accurate mental model of this probability breakdown and I believe it totally erodes their motivation to vote in the first place.

If states’ winner takes all rules were eliminated the EC would serve as a far more accurate representation of voter interest than either the EC in its current form or the straight popular vote. I say that because it would allow a wider distribution of diversity in the vote while countering bias of density disparities.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#268

Post by [deleted] »

djrogers wrote: post #266
wtallis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's inherently impossible to know how prevalent that phenomenon is. There was a lot of analysis after the 2016 election cycle about the "shy Trump voter" hypothesis, and it really didn't hold up, and continues to not hold up with under the data available from this election cycle. It is completely unreasonable to postulate that the effect would be drastically bigger this year, after four years of Trump actually…

> There was a lot of analysis after the 2016 election cycle about the "shy Trump voter" hypothesis, and it really didn't hold up, and continues to not hold up with under the data available from this election cycle I do find it rather humorous that people would claim this isn’t a thread where multiple people have been downvoted (in some cases to death) for stating or implying that they will be voting for Trump. None o…

[deleted]

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#269

Post by runawaybottle »

nl wrote: post #212
CyanLite2 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TX has a better chance of going blue than FL. Beto O'Rourke has registered 1.8 million new voters in the past 4 years in the state of Texas, 300k of those were registered in the past 2 weeks. Beto lost Texas by 200k votes. And so far, TX has been killing it in terms of early-voting. About 75%(!!) turnout so far than what they had in 2016. And we still have 11 days left to go before E-day. Biggest turnout percentage i…

Most modelling puts Florida as about 52/48 Biden's way but Texas 60/40 Trump's way. It would be a mild surprise if Biden won Texas. It would be astonishing is Biden won Texas without also winning Florida.

One of the best democratic candidates ever, Barack Obama, couldn’t win Texas.

He won Florida twice. Biden doesn’t have Obama’s charisma, so he basically has to bet on Trump frustration to carry Florida.

This election is a total question of Trump exhaustion. If people are exhausted from him then we’ll see the toss ups turn blue. If people are more frustrated with lockdowns, riots, protests, race coming to the surface in America (a lot of people don’t like that it’s being exposed and talked about), immigration, then toss ups go red.

I don’t think the pollsters probing for ‘Did Trump handle coronavirus well’ is the right thing to ask, mainly because I don’t think likely right-wing voters fault him. The same way they didn’t fault him for any of his access-Hollywood tapes, etc.

They are more likely to fault social welfare, crime, wealth redistribution, immigration, globalization - the same way they did in 2016. If they aren’t overwhelmed by Trump’s aggressiveness, then why would anything have changed in 2020? Just because the age 15-30 crowd on Reddit and the media lean one way doesn’t mean things actually changed in peoples minds.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#270

Post by conanbatt »

confidantlake wrote: post #261
rubidium wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The electoral college is designed (from the start) to prevent the larger, more populous states from dominating the country. Seems to be working as designed. And doing a good job as a system. Politics is extremely broken, yes. But I don’t think the electoral college is the fault.

This argument never made sense. In a one person one vote system, the concept of a state never comes into play. It is a national election, states are irrelevant. Under the electoral college system, states actually come into play. There could be a case where a state grows large enough in population to get 51% of the electoral votes. If that state had a winner take all system, then that state would choose every presiden…

Everyone gets 1 vote, but not all votes are worth the same. That is true for any voting system.
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