OT: Predictions for 2016 Presidential Election

[no_such_reality]

[quote=livinincali][quote=spdrun]If the popular vote is grossly ignored, I hope we end up with riots in the streets and a revolution. I mean that in the most literal sense possible.[/quote]

We live under a constitutional republic. It was specifically designed this way so that majorities couldn’t repress minorities. There were checks and balances such that a small state like Road Island had an equal say about government activities as the larger states at lease in some branches of government. It’s always convenient to say majority rule goes right up until your on the wrong side of the majority. It’s good that we have these checks and balances. That said it would be next impossible for someone to massively win the popular vote and fail to get 50% of the electoral college.[/quote]

Won’t happen in a Nloomberg race, he won’t take any States and it’ll be like the 96 election were some states are won by someone with high 40s, but very unlikely someone doesn’t get the 270.

I also actually think Sanders versus Trump will really rally the democrats to a party line vote. Between fear of Trump and anger of losing Hillary over “right wing media smear”, they’ll turn out and vote in droves as long as they don’t stroke out.

I’m pretty thankful right now I live in California and my vote has little impact on the election. It often seems in our State if Charles Manson got on the ballot claiming to be a democrat, we’d elect him 55-45.

[scaredyclassic]

Vermin supreme got shut out of a debate just because he sprinkled glitter on another candidate during a prior debate.

Life is unfair.

I prefer sanders to trump but I’d vote a trump sanders tkt. With either as pres.

[spdrun]

Trump-Sanders ticket? Only if it’s turned into a reality TV show with all of their conversations broadcast for posterity.

[FlyerInHi]

I’m a lot more worried about Cruz than Trump. The ideological are the people one should be worried about.

I could deal with Trump. He’s a businessman, so in the end, he’ll do what’s good for the economy. Isn’t that what we do already?

I want to see the parties Melania throws at the white house. It’s gonna be HUGE!

[utcsox]

We are less than 48 hours until Donald Trump wins his first delegates….

[livinincali]

[quote=zk]
I’m not sure what you mean by massively (nor am I sure why you seem to imply that it’s not important what happens when a candidate wins by a solid but not massive margin), but it would be very easy to win the popular vote in a 3-candidate race by a solid margin and fail to get 50% of the electoral college.

To have congressmen choose a president is really bad. To have them choose a president in a way that a Wyomingan’s vote essentially counts 65 times as much as a Californian’s is a travesty of democracy.[/quote]

It’s happened once in the country’s history so it’s not common. Jackson won the popular vote by a significant margin but congress elected Quincy Adams. I wouldn’t call it a travesty though. It split the one party system of the Democratic-Republican party into 2 parties. Jackson won the 1828 election by a landslide. In some respects it woke the voters up. Maybe that’s exactly what we need in our current political process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1824

[zk]

[quote=livinincali][quote=zk]
I’m not sure what you mean by massively (nor am I sure why you seem to imply that it’s not important what happens when a candidate wins by a solid but not massive margin), but it would be very easy to win the popular vote in a 3-candidate race by a solid margin and fail to get 50% of the electoral college.

To have congressmen choose a president is really bad. To have them choose a president in a way that a Wyomingan’s vote essentially counts 65 times as much as a Californian’s is a travesty of democracy.[/quote]

It’s happened once in the country’s history so it’s not common. Jackson won the popular vote by a significant margin but congress elected Quincy Adams. I wouldn’t call it a travesty though. It split the one party system of the Democratic-Republican party into 2 parties. Jackson won the 1828 election by a landslide. In some respects it woke the voters up. Maybe that’s exactly what we need in our current political process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1824%5B/quote%5D

Whether it’s common or not is completely irrelevant.

How it changed the political parties in that particular instance is also irrelevant.

Jackson got 41% of the popular vote to Adams’s 31% (and won the electoral vote 99-84), and Adams was “elected” president.

How is that not a travesty of democracy?

How would it not again be a travesty of democracy if Bloomberg or Sanders won a solid plurality of both popular and electoral votes, but republican nominee and third-place finisher in the general election Ted Cruz was elected president?

[livinincali]

[quote=zk]
How is that not a travesty of democracy?

How would it not again be a travesty of democracy if Bloomberg or Sanders won a solid plurality of both popular and electoral votes, but republican nominee and third-place finisher in the general election Ted Cruz was elected president?[/quote]

Well first of all our government isn’t a pure democracy. It’s a constitutional republic and it was specifically designed that way to prevent tyranny. The founders decided that if you couldn’t manage greater than 50% of the electoral college that congress would decide the president.

Assume for a moment that you had 5 candidates running with 3 somewhere in the middle, 1 extremely left and 1 extremely right, what if the hard core right managed 30%, the hard left managed 25% and the rest in the middle split the vote of the majority of american’s core ideology. Would you want the hard core right to rule because they got the majority vote? In that case you probably want congress to elect the more middle 3rd place finisher.

Some countries solve that issue with a run off. But then again would you want to be forced to chose between the hard right and hard left of which neither really represents your core values because they ended up being the top 2.

The system was designed to keep a weak majority from claiming the power of the executive branch and in the US the executive branch as a lot of power. It has some flaws but every system of elected government has it’s flaws.

[XBoxBoy]

[quote=livinincali]
[W]ould you want to be forced to chose between the hard right and hard left of which neither really represents your core values because they ended up being the top 2.[/quote]

Ummmm…. And that is different from the current two party system how? Just sayin’…

[zk]

[quote=livinincali]

Well first of all our government isn’t a pure democracy. It’s a constitutional republic and it was specifically designed that way to prevent tyranny. The founders decided that if you couldn’t manage greater than 50% of the electoral college that congress would decide the president.
[/quote]
You’re going to have to explain to me how that last sentence relates to the first two sentences.

Yes, I get that our government isn’t a pure democracy. The world hasn’t seen one of those in thousands of years, if ever. I get that it’s a constitutional republic, where the people elect representatives.
How does that translate to, or lead to, or result in, “The founders decided that if you couldn’t manage greater than 50% of the electoral college that congress would decide the president.”

When I say, “it’s a travesty of democracy,” and you respond with, “our government isn’t pure democracy,” that’s missing the point. The point isn’t that our country is technically a democracy and this goes against that. The point is that about the will of the people. In a constitutional republic, our representatives should be elected by the people. And if you give equal vote to 600,000 Wyomingans and 40 million Californians (which is the best-case scenario – the house members are not obliged to cast their state’s vote for the candidate who won that state…worst case scenario, the house members pick whomever they want to pick out of the three), then our representatives are not being elected by the people.
[quote=livinincali]

Assume for a moment that you had 5 candidates running with 3 somewhere in the middle, 1 extremely left and 1 extremely right, what if the hard core right managed 30%, the hard left managed 25% and the rest in the middle split the vote of the majority of american’s core ideology. Would you want the hard core right to rule because they got the majority vote? In that case you probably want congress to elect the more middle 3rd place finisher.
[/quote]

That’s what I, personally, would want in that particular case. But what I, personally want is not what’s important. Also, in your example, what makes you think congress would elect the middle-of-the-road, 3rd-place finisher?

Let’s use a different example. Let’s say it’s Sanders/Cruz/Bloomberg. Sanders and Bloomberg get 40% each, and Cruz gets 20%. The red states don’t count for many electoral votes because they don’t have many people. That’s why Cruz only got 20%. But, if nobody gets a majority of the electoral vote, each red state counts as much as each blue state in the house vote, despite the fact that Wyoming has 600,000 people and California has 40,000,000 people. Bloomberg and Sanders split the blue and purple states, and Cruz gets all the red states. Cruz gets “elected.”

[quote=livinincali]

Some countries solve that issue with a run off. But then again would you want to be forced to chose between the hard right and hard left of which neither really represents your core values because they ended up being the top 2.
[/quote]

That’s kinda how it is now in most elections. And that’s preferable to a vote where a heavier vote is given to some citizens than others.
[quote=livinincali]

The system was designed to keep a weak majority from claiming the power of the executive branch and in the US the executive branch as a lot of power. It has some flaws but every system of elected government has it’s flaws.

[/quote]

Better that the president is chosen by a weak majority of the people than not by the people at all.

[Coronita]

Well it looks like Cruz is going to win Iowa.

[paramount]

[quote=flu]Well it looks like Cruz is going to win Iowa.[/quote]

Thankfully…

BTW, pay no attention to Iowa.

The Iowa process is ridiculous, focused on ethanol and not much more.

Does anyone even understand how the Iowa ‘voting’ process truly works?

[svelte]

Let’s see.

Iowa didn’t pick the eventual Republican nominee in 2012:

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/states/iowa

Or in 2008:

http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/results/states/IA.html

And did in 2004 only because Bush ran unopposed in the Republican party.

Not so sure Iowa’s results tell us much.

[livinincali]

[quote=zk]
Let’s use a different example. Let’s say it’s Sanders/Cruz/Bloomberg. Sanders and Bloomberg get 40% each, and Cruz gets 20%. The red states don’t count for many electoral votes because they don’t have many people. That’s why Cruz only got 20%. But, if nobody gets a majority of the electoral vote, each red state counts as much as each blue state in the house vote, despite the fact that Wyoming has 600,000 people and California has 40,000,000 people. Bloomberg and Sanders split the blue and purple states, and Cruz gets all the red states. Cruz gets “elected.”
[/quote]

The problem is our election process wasn’t created under a 2 major political party system. They had to take into account a variety of possibilities including multiple strong political parties. Nobody wants a president with only 30% of the popular vote. Especially if the other 70% really really dislike their position. Look at Europe. Most of those countries elect their government leader via collations of the representatives. Most countries in Europe don’t directly elect their president. They elect their political party with the knowledge of whom would be president if that political party has a majority. Some countries have weak presidents elected by a popular majority. All countries feared this rule by weak majority so almost every constitutional republic puts something in place to prevent it.

We decided to essentially give each state an equal vote. We did the same with the senate, it was an important principle that small states still got a say in the government. We could have done it by population in a winner take all fashion but the electoral college already handles this for the most part. We could give the representatives in congress (you did vote for this person to represent you) an equal vote but then again your feared scenario of the 3rd place guy winning the election happens anyways under the current makeup of congress. We could do a run off and maybe this is your preferred solution, but again you can end up with some extreme candidates.

I think out founders thought of a variety of election mechanisms and settled on this one even with it’s flaws. I can’t think of an election mechanism that doesn’t have at least some flaws in certain scenarios.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=svelte]Let’s see.

Iowa didn’t pick the eventual Republican nominee in 2012:

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/states/iowa

Or in 2008:

http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/results/states/IA.html

And did in 2004 only because Bush ran unopposed in the Republican party.

Not so sure Iowa’s results tell us much.[/quote]

Actually Iowa told Us tons. It effectively identified three candidates on the repub side with the rest not garnering 25% collectively and the highest 9%. It also showed Rubio strong in the population centers.

Rubio today looks much stronger for the eventual nomination, as does Trump. Carson could hang on for a VP spot, possibly a Rubio/Carson ticket. Fiorina got 2%, effectively putting a hole in ambitions and possibly cratering a VP slot.

On the Dem side Sanders was strong, both rurally and in the population center.

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