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this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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So if voting matters so much in the presidential election, why in 2016 did Hillary get 29% of the vote yet lost, and Trump only got 28% but won?
Please, I'm genuinely not understanding but would really like to. Can someone please explain, like I'm 5, why my vote matters at all in the presidential election.
Depends on your state’s electoral college votes. In a way, if you’re in a state “safe” for a party your vote for the opposite is almost meaningless as your vote doesn’t count thanks to the EC being what actually counts in the national election. If you’re in a battleground state your vote is very important as a win in that state can shift which party gets the EC vote.
Populous states have more EC votes, however there are more states that have far, far less population that tend to overwhelm the EC votes of the populous states.
Say for instance California has 54 EC votes (pop ~40 mil); IN, NC, TN, MO have 48 EC votes in total and around 24 million in population combined. Let’s say the latter four are safe “red” states. Now along comes Ohio, a “battleground state” with 17 EC votes and population of 12 million. If Ohio republicans votes win the state, that means the EC votes total 65 for the republicans, a win for them with 36 million people total even though California has 40 million people who voted for the Dems. That’s how you get a minority of individual votes going to a party yet they still win the election.
This is really a simplified version and limited of what happens on a national scale. Some big states are populous and “safe” for one party or the other but tend to lean democrat, giving the Dems large EC votes, most less populous states vote Republican giving the republicans a nearly matching total. That’s why the votes in battleground states like Ohio are incredibly important as they can win or lose an election. It’s how the republicans can lose the popular vote yet still win the presidency.
IOW thanks to the electoral college less populous states can total more EC votes and win the election. If you live in a state that is solidly one party or the other your opposition vote means little. If you live in a battleground state your vote is incredibly important as we’ve seen that a minuscule percentage of votes can swing an election.
I don’t know if that was simple enough, but I hope it helped.
An important historical context for this I would like to add as well. There's a chance I may be wrong about the specifics but this is my best understanding of it.
When this concept was developed during the constitutional convention. They wanted to protect "states rights", which has always been a soft language for slavery. The Electoral College is in the same section of the constitution as the 3/5ths compromise, which said that slaves count as 3/5th of a person when being counted as population to have representatives/Electoral college votes.
So modern Republicans are benefiting and have more power than the general population actually voted for, based on a structure used to protect the institution of slavery. This is a key example of "institutional racism(*edit)" and helps me understand the obsession with things like critical race theory. Because understanding the structure, delegitmizes the power Republicans hold. The most obvious example to me right now is the Supreme Court. A mixture between the consequences of institutional racism and modern GOP political rat fuckery is doing so much harm to America.
I agree with why the EC was a popular compromise for southern slaveholding states, but I don’t know what advantage it offers today as they don’t have the slaves to add to their overall totals compared to the more populous northern states.
Exactly, unfortunately it would take an amendment to change it though. Political devides make that virtually impossible.
That's not the worst one. In the 2000's Bush straight up stole the election.
Because she barely lost in a few crucial states. It would have taken fewer than 80,000 nonvoters voting for her in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to flip the election.
While that's actually a crazy low number of people, I'm not in one of those "swing" states. If my state's electoral votes already go towards the party I want, what's the motivation for me to vote? The possibility of my state flipping is there, but it seems unlikely. I'm asking because this exact question has been asked to me, and I honestly couldn't find a better answer than, "you never know..."
It comes down to the tragedy of the commons. It's unlikely to make a difference if one person does or doesn't vote, but with a lot of people it can. Which state it is just changes how many people it takes.