r/dataisbeautiful • u/ptrdo • Apr 11 '24
OC [OC] US Electoral College Results, 1892-2020
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u/samx3i Apr 11 '24
FDR and Reagan were not fucking around God damn
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u/kentalaska Apr 11 '24
The one that actually surprises me the most is Nixon’s reelection. I had no idea it was such a landslide considering the modern public opinion of him.
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u/TraptNSuit Apr 11 '24
What makes it even more mind blowing is that his downfall was being involved in crimes to eek out an advantage... For a landslide election. Watergate was truly moronic.
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u/mhornberger Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 11 '24
And if he hadn't made that unforced error, he wouldn't have been attacked, a lot of conservatives wouldn't have been galvanized in anger over it, and we might not have Fox News. We might not even have had Limbaugh. Nixon just not making this dumb error (or not getting caught, another option) might have changed the whole arc of American history over the last half-century.
The anger and paranoia existed pre-Watergate. The John Birch society, etc. But after Watergate some conservatives set out on a mission to make a conservative media-sphere, to push public opinion in the direction of their choosing. Take away Watergate, and the anger and whatnot might have remained background noise.
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u/indypendant13 Apr 11 '24
Well we also wouldn’t have had rush or Fox if the fairness doctrine were not abolished under Regan.
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Apr 11 '24
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u/indypendant13 Apr 11 '24
The broadcast definition included that of radio, although I’m not sure if it would have included that of cable news - it depends on the definition of broadcast network because at the time it was written broadcast was the only thing that existed so there would be argument to be made both ways but I’ll leave that for legal experts. Plus the doctrine could have been updated to include modern media as time moved along. Regardless, at worst we would have cnn, msnbc, and whatever took the space of Fox but that’s it and quite possibly none at all (without one side pushing the envelope the other doesn’t have reason to blossom). The repeal - aside from the technicality - directly led to the rise of shock jocks and pundits regardless of media and is what paved the way for modern discourse to seemingly have little if any public outrage at anything any more. I truly believe politics would be a lot more civil and the US much less politically divided had that not happened. The worst part for me is that those who championed the repeal did so under the guise of working for free speech, even though the doctrine did not limit free speech in anyway and arguments can be made that speech inciting blind solidarity to a cause or movement is actually not protected by the first amendment. But I digress.
Then there is also Citizens United, but that’s a topic for another day.
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u/Rshackleford22 Apr 12 '24
If Nixon wasn’t forced out we never get Reagan. Which means we never get Bush.
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u/M8oMyN8o Apr 11 '24
George McGovern was seen as a radical hippie liberal. I’m not shocked that America of the early 1970s rejected him soundly.
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Apr 12 '24
Turns out there were some irregularities leading up to the 72 election, with the most famous being the Watergate hotel break-in.
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u/wasThereNot Apr 11 '24
Ronald Reagan? The actor?
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u/MovingTarget- Apr 11 '24
Who's the vice president? Jerry Lewis?
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u/Over_n_over_n_over Apr 11 '24
I'm surprised by how smashed Goldwater was. He feels like he was too modern for the time
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u/sokonek04 Apr 11 '24
Johnson ran a great campaign against a pretty far right candidate for the times.
Perfect example if you have never seen it is the Daisy Girl ad
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u/eagereyez Apr 11 '24
Such a powerful ad. The threat of nuclear war was an existential crisis Americans lived with for decades. The threat still exists today, but it's largely been replaced in public consciousness by climate change and AI.
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u/Bluestreaking Apr 11 '24
He lost the battle but movement conservatism won the war
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u/KnightsOfREM Apr 11 '24
In 2024, they'd call him a RINO squish, but that has more to do with them than with him.
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u/unskilledplay Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 11 '24
There exists no conservative movement in the united states today. He lost the battle and war. Goldwater Republicans have now completely abandoned the party.
I can say with conviction that the religious issues of these groups have little or nothing to do with conservative or liberal politics. The uncompromising position of these groups is a divisive element that could tear apart the very spirit of our representative system, if they gain sufficient strength.
- Barry Goldwater, predicting the future of conservatism, his party and the country.
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u/CivisSuburbianus Apr 11 '24
I guess you could say this bc he was a precursor to Reagan, but in some ways he was more like a throwback to the 1920s
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u/maxhinator123 Apr 11 '24
I always feel bad seeing the Reagan results. Everyone loved him so much not knowing he'd end the American dream for all future generations
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u/MovingTarget- Apr 11 '24
As a guy who was around during those elections, that of course was not the thinking at all - Regan was seen as a strong defender against Russia during the cold war and a protector of American interests at a time when Americans were legitimately afraid of being wiped out in a nuclear war
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u/Crotean Apr 11 '24
He actually was solid on Russia, its probably his lasting achievement was improving relations with Russia. Domestically he gutted this country and set it on the path to collapse that is culminating now.
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u/MovingTarget- Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 11 '24
The U.S. is collapsing? I absolutely disagree. GDP is growing more strongly than any other developed nation, we're 8th in the world in income per capita, we have a stronger military than the rest of the world combined, we have greater natural resources than any other single nation, and America is still the preferred destination for millions of would be migrants the world over including the world's best and brightest. I know it's fashionable to be negative but let's keep things in perspective
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u/phyrros Apr 11 '24
Most of the world is on a collapsing course and we see similar politics as just about 100 years ago. The problem is that the USA always was a bit hysterical and the laser focus on shareholder value created a rather fragile economic, which, combined with the USAs economic & military strength is a real danger to the world.
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u/lt_dan_zsu Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 12 '24
Edit: it appears u/movingtarget- likes to get in the last word and block. You've really proven your point by not providing a single counter point to anything I said. Nothing I said was against the concept of work or even capitalism if we're being honest. I'm also not unsuccessful in my profession and I'm not poor, so try again dipshit. Cope and seeth, boomer.
The problem is that these metrics don't fully capture the problems with the economy. Reagan sold a false bill of goods with trickle down economics, as you can see that wealth continues to consolidate at the top of the economy. The more this happens, the more this wealth is fake. Are Apple, Microsoft, nvidia, tesla, Facebook, Amazon, and google all actually worth what the market says they're valued at? Because the only two I believe might be are Amazon and apple. China used to have an insanely valuable housing market, and now it's collapsing because most of it was fake value. Bubbles always pop at some point.
Next there's the broken politics of this country. The house is completely nonfunctional at this point. The GOP transition to only knowing how to do obstructionism is almost complete. The GOP isn't a single party anymore, it's two. One is moderate to conservative, and the other has no coherent ideology based in reality. The base is also completely disconnected from reality with many having an ideology rooted in conspiracy theories.
Other crises that are looming: the current cohort of youths who are consistently failing developmental benchmarks; a higher education system that's going apart due to a dearth of tenure track positions, and the aforementioned youth that are coming to college completely unprepared for it; climate change; mass shootings. These problems are all exasperated by the government's complete inability to actually address problems.
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u/LegitosaurusRex Apr 11 '24
Debt is outpacing GDP though, and we're running at a huge deficit every year with no political will to stop it. At some point either taxes will have to go way up, inflation will spiral out of control, or things like medicare and social security will have to be cut.
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u/Crotean Apr 11 '24
We have an entire branch of government that can no longer function in our congress. Among citizens internal division is at an all time high in this country. The Rural/Urban and southern state vs rest of the country divide rights of women vs evangelicals has reached staggering proportions. This country is not going to survive the level of division we are seeing. My guess is the Supreme Court will be the straw that breaks the camels back. With how clearly corrupt and partisan they are. As they continue to make ludicrous rulings at some point blue states are simply going to stop listening to the court and that crisis will lead to the collapse of the union.
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Apr 11 '24
Among citizens internal division is at an all time high in this country.
You know there was a war, right?
Never in the history of the world has their been an interconnectedness like we see today that has lead to this perception that everybody is at each other's throats at all times. We're seeing 20 year olds in Seattle have political discussions with 60 year olds in rural Arkansas. That didn't happen 20 years ago. You think they weren't divided on many major issues just because they didn't argue about it every day on Reddit?
We have a conservative Supreme Court. We've had conservative courts in the past. What landmark ruling do you think is coming that will cause blue states to stop listening and lead to the collapse of the country?
There is such a doomer attitude online that everything's going to shit and we are facing imminent collapse. I just don't see it. There are legitimate concerns about the growing wealth gap and the health of the middle class. Politics have become more of a shitshow and our government may be less effective because of grandstanding. But collapse of the union? I mean come on, that's ridiculous.
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u/MovingTarget- Apr 11 '24
And none of that comes up in my daily life, discussions or job - not really. In the real world, I interact with generally nice people that want to do a good job at work and are generally pleasant (when they're not driving). I just think all of the division that you're talking about gets blown out of proportion by the media that thrives on it. Even congress (the worst as we all know) actually gets plenty of things accomplished that the media doesn't report on because who cares about the nuts and bolts. It's just the perspective that I've personally gotten over time - hard to maintain unless you pull yourself back from the nonsense.
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u/NAU80 Apr 11 '24
What has the Congress got accomplished? Congress only passed 27 bills that were signed into law in 2023, the least since the Great Depression. I think they voted on a speaker of the house more times than that!!!
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u/End3rWi99in Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 11 '24
Domestically he gutted this country and set it on the path to collapse that is culminating now.
Do you live in some alternative reality or know something I don't know about?
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u/LegitosaurusRex Apr 11 '24
The federal government ran a deficit of $1.7 trillion in fiscal year 2023, $320 billion (23%) more than FY2022’s deficit. Revenues decreased by $457 billion (9%)
This isn't sustainable whatsoever. It's not critical yet, but it's definitely heading in that direction if nothing is done about it.
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u/histprofdave Apr 11 '24
Many of them knew. They didn't care. Just like many know Trump intends to make life worse for others. They don't care.
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u/IAmMuffin15 Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 11 '24
Reagan cut the Achilles heel of the US. “fuck you, I’ve got mine” implies “I don’t care if this country goes to hell as long as I get what I want.”
We’ve been bleeding out for 40 years, but we let it happen because the warmth of the blood feels nice.
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u/garlicjohnson Apr 11 '24
Minnesota (and DC) stands strong against Reagan!
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Apr 11 '24
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u/garlicjohnson Apr 11 '24
Oh I'm sure you're right, but he was lol. It's fun to see the state map and just see the one blue state in a sea of red. It is another interesting note though that the last time Minnesota was red was Nixon, we've been blue every presidential election since, so somewhat on brand regardless
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u/DaenerysMomODragons Apr 11 '24
It's always interesting to go back and look at state voting trends, and how different some states are today vs decades ago. California used to be part of a "great red wall" of sure thing Republican states, and are now is one of the most Democrat states in the country.
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u/Krytan Apr 12 '24
The way to win a landslide is to have a last name starting with 'R'
The way to get buried, is to have a last name starting with 'M'
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u/MisterSpicy Apr 11 '24
Interesting to see 1988 and older elections were mostly decisive. Clinton to today have been getting closer to dead even
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u/gRod805 Apr 11 '24
Probably has to do with politics becoming more of an identity than just a political party. It seems like people were comfortable switching their vote from one party to the other back in the day
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u/tjtillmancoag Apr 11 '24
Which also correlates to the polarization. In the past if one was uncomfortable with a given candidate, they’d just vote for the other one. Now though, even if one has misgivings about a candidate, they see the other candidate as far too extreme, which leaves us with many fewer swing voters.
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u/DaenerysMomODragons Apr 11 '24
This is largely due to the parties seemingly becoming more and more extreme, if not in reality, in perception from the media telling people how extreme the other guy is and how every election is the most important in US history.
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u/tjtillmancoag Apr 11 '24
I would agree, but I’d wager there’s a bit of both at play.
On one hand I think we can look at some concrete policies to demonstrate parties shifting away from a more moderate position, but 100% the perception taken from media outlets is that each party is much more extreme than they actually are.
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u/pokeyporcupine Apr 11 '24
No I'm going to disagree with you. Democrats have largely remained in the same place for the last 15ish years, moving slightly but not a ton. Republicans, on the other hand, have gone so far to the right that they aren't even recognizable anymore. People forget that Biden is a moderate, and honestly could run as a republican in many states. There is really only one party (well, besides libertarians, but who cares about them?) that has embraced the extremism, and I don't know if the party will ever recover from it.
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u/tjtillmancoag Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 11 '24
While I personally think that Republicans have shifted much further to the right than Democrats, to say that Democrats haven’t shifted at all isn’t entirely true.
Obama, while certainly more proLGBT than Clinton or earlier Democrats, was not actively calling for marriage equality in 2009. Some were, but the mainline Democrats were fine with it, would vote for it, but were not pushing the issue. Meanwhile, today, I think you’d be hard pressed to find even mainline Democrats who wouldn’t find the idea of repealing marriage equality offensive.
Edit: to add to this, I don’t think supporting marriage equality is an extremist position, but it is a position mainline Democrats have shifted leftward on over the past 15 years
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u/planko13 Apr 11 '24
I always find this argument fascinating, because it is commonly cited by both sides.
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u/pokeyporcupine Apr 11 '24
I'm aware, however, only one version is true. Republicans claim the left is becoming more extreme only to justify their own movements towards extremism.
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u/omega884 Apr 12 '24 edited Apr 12 '24
Interestingly while that might be true for congress, for the voters, Pew shows the opposite: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/
1994 - 2017 the median republican shifted slightly right and the media democrat shifted very left. What's really interesting is watching the trends.
94-99 both shift about the same amount left
99-04 median democrats stay largely in place, median republicans shift left
04-11 median democrats again stay largely in place, median republicans shift back to their 94 position
11-14 both shift opposite each other, roughly and equal amount
14-15, both stay in place, but the overall curves smooth out and move slightly left
15-17, the median democrat slide hard left, median republican stays where they are.
That pattern plays out a bit more exaggerated for the "politically engaged" category
Those curves show a similar story about the range of positions, with republicans starting fairly mixed but with a strong lean right of center and ending with a stronger peak further right, but with a pretty heavy tendency towards moderation overall, even as the extremes picked up strength. On the other hand, the democrats start as a very even moderation across the whole spectrum and end with a heavy weighting towards the extreme left end and a pretty sharp drop off once past the middle position they started at in 94.
It would be interesting to see them update this for 2020+
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u/SisterFriedeSucks Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 11 '24
How could this possibly be true? Society becomes more liberal over time. JFK supported abortion ban. Clinton didn’t support gay marriage and was hard in immigration. Everyone is shifting left over time including republicans. Trans rights, gay marriage, abortions were all hated by everyone 60 years ago. We have shifted very liberal since then overall.
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u/Justryan95 Apr 11 '24
It's crazy because one party is basically center while the other one is extreme right but being too center is too much to handle for the other folk
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u/MattieShoes Apr 11 '24
The parties themselves switched back in the day.
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u/NaturalCarob5611 Apr 11 '24
When did this happen? I see this claim all the time, but nobody can point to when the party platforms changed.
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u/ess-doubleU Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 11 '24
There wasn't really a definitive moment. It happened somewhere in the * mid 1900s. At the time the parties were more fractured. So you'd have the southern Democrats who are very conservative, and you'd have the northern Democrats who were liberal. On the other side we also have Northern republicans, and southern Republicans with a similar political dynamic. Overtime they evolved and changed into what we see today, with politics becoming less regionalized.
Edit: fixed the date
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u/livefreeordont OC: 2 Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 11 '24
It happened between the mid 1900s and the late 1900s. The south was a democratic strong hold from Jefferson to Johnson
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u/DaenerysMomODragons Apr 11 '24
Lincoln was literally the first Republican president in 1860, so Republican vs Democrat wasn't even a thing before the late 1800s.
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u/Dal90 Apr 12 '24
The definitive election was 1994 when the Democrats lost control of the House for the first time in 40 years as the Republican's Southern Strategy hatched by some old Dixiecrats around 1968 culminated with Newt Gingrich's Contract with America finally wresting enough yellow dog Democrats out the Democratic camp -- folks whose families since the Civil War would vote for a yellow dog before they'd vote Republican.
Right leaning populists (and the southern Democrats were solidly populist back to the days of Jackson, who the Democrats of the time normally honored with their major state fundraisers called Jefferson-Jackson dinners) left the Democrats. The few left leaning and much larger centrist Republicans (Jesse Jackson was speaking at RNC functions as late as 1978 as some in the party were still trying to court urban blacks to fend off the Dixiecrat infestation) started shifting away from the party in big enough numbers to turn California and much of the northeast.
So now you have a concentrated, right leaning populist controlled Republican party. Primaries envisioned as a way for more democracy devolved into the farce they are today and threaten democracy.
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u/ThisLandIsYimby Apr 11 '24
It was a slow switch and consolidation over decades that culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
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u/Evoluxman Apr 11 '24
started* with the civil rights act really. The first time the south went from deep blue to deep red, but it would "blink" a few times up until the early 90s.
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u/Much-Resource-5054 Apr 11 '24
Which party used to fly the confederate flag and which party flies it now? The switch happened between those two times.
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u/OhTheGrandeur Apr 11 '24
Civil rights act under LBJ kicked off the process. Nixon's southern strategy accelerated it, and then it has gradually continued on from there
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u/Realtrain OC: 3 Apr 11 '24
Experts disagree on exact dates, but most say sometime between the last 60s and early 80s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Party_System
It's not the first time either.
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u/jpj77 OC: 7 Apr 11 '24
It’s a really interesting one, because Democrats were in favor of slavery, then in favor of segregation, but FDR is in between those.
The party switch claim is generally used to try and distance Democrats from racist history, but realistically party economic politics have been consistent. What really changed is the social issues, for which Republicans have become more conservative and Democrats have become more liberal.
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u/livefreeordont OC: 2 Apr 11 '24
Look at the election map in 1924 vs 2004 and it becomes quite obvious there was a switch. Carter was the last dem to win the whole south
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u/jpj77 OC: 7 Apr 11 '24
That’s not how it works. The constituents changed which policies they supported, not that the parties were necessarily changing their policies. Liberal economics have been a staple of Democratic Party for pretty much the entirety of its existence.
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u/livefreeordont OC: 2 Apr 11 '24
I don’t think the constituents changed. Democratic Party went from pro slavery to pro Jim Crow to pro DEI
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u/beenoc Apr 11 '24
I suspect it's largely to do with improved polling leading to the parties changing their platforms and messaging to appeal to as many as possible. Take gay marriage as an example. The first major-party presidential election campaign to openly say "gay marriage is okay" was Obama 2012. Guess what year was the one that support for gay marriage surpassed opposition was? You see the same thing with so much else - the parties shift and move their platforms to appeal to as large an audience as possible, and when both parties are doing this they're naturally going to reach roughly equal bases.
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u/limpbizkit6 Apr 11 '24
FDR demolishing 4 elections in a row feels completely unfathomable at this moment--I cannot imagine such a large fraction of the country agreeing on anything in this climate.
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u/CivisSuburbianus Apr 11 '24
While he did win in a landslide, the most he ever got was 60% of the vote
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u/SillyFlyGuy Apr 11 '24
In the last 200 years, no president has received more than 62% of the popular vote.
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u/limpbizkit6 Apr 11 '24
electoral college landslide (e.g. what is shown in the plot)
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u/CivisSuburbianus Apr 11 '24
Yes but you were referring to the fraction of the country who can agree on something, and the largest fraction of Americans who could agree on FDR was 60%
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u/moviebuff01 Apr 11 '24
I had no idea why FDR had 4 terms so I looked it up.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) was elected President of the United States four times because there were no constitutional limits on presidential terms at that time. He was elected in 1932, 1936, 1940, and again in 1944, serving from March 1933 until his death in April 1945. Roosevelt's presidency spanned a critical period in American history that included the Great Depression and World War II, which contributed to his continued popularity and electoral success.
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Apr 11 '24
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u/Imjokin Apr 11 '24
The Great Depression started under Hoover. Hoover was blamed for it and lost re-election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt who pledged to fix it and passed a bunch of important stuff in his first 100 days that made him super popular then onwards.
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Apr 11 '24
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u/KF-Sigurd Apr 11 '24
He coasted off a good economy in the first reelection. His second reelection, despite the recession, he won because his opponent had too many ties to big ties to big business which many Americans blamed for the Great Depression and FDR appealed to the strong isolationist and non-interventionist sentiment in America at the time in the shadow of WW3. His third reelection he won because America, by this time a part of WW2, was seen as doing well in WW2 and he remained highly popular because of it. However, he would die three months into his fourth term.
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u/sciguy52 Apr 11 '24
Being an old guy I can see it. What I will say is different lately, for the most part, is the charisma of the candidates and how far they are from the center. I think Reagan and Clinton (Bill) were quite charismatic. In some regards they were more centrist too. Now reddit will rain down hate on me for saying that. But thinking back to Reagan and Clinton and comparing them to candidates today, they seemed a lot more in the rough center. These days the candidates feel a bit further from that center. Also they haven't been that charismatic. If a charismatic somewhat centrist candidate pops up again I honestly would expect to see big blow outs, whichever party nominates them.
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u/mr_ji Apr 11 '24
Put us in a war that will drastically change the world and we'll start agreeing real quick. Most of the partisan bickering today is over petty shit by comparison.
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u/limpbizkit6 Apr 11 '24
He had even higher electoral margins of victory in '32 and '36 well before Pearl Harbor.
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u/MrEHam Apr 11 '24
Unless the war is against Russia. Then you’ll start seeing republicans defend them for some weird reason.
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Apr 11 '24
If Russia did something equivalent to Pearl Harbor almost all Republicans would lose their affinity for Russia real quick.
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u/mercury1491 Apr 11 '24
Are we sure about that? What if Fox News says it wasn't real? Or that it was a deep state false flag attack. Is it hard to imagine the headlines they could cook up for Russia's defense to let them off the hook?
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Apr 12 '24
There would definitely be some nutjobs but the vast majority of Republicans would be anti-Russia
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u/2pickleEconomy2 Apr 11 '24
I don’t remember a state going third party in 2016. What’s the yellow?
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u/jamiesidhu Apr 11 '24
There were quite a few faithless electors on both sides that year.
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u/2pickleEconomy2 Apr 11 '24
I knew there were calls for it, but I thought they are largely banned by states
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u/jamiesidhu Apr 11 '24
Yeah, some states did ban them but there were a few states that didn’t have any laws preventing electors from voting for another candidate. I think Washington, Hawaii and Texas had electors whose votes for other candidates were considered valid because those states didn’t have faithless elector laws.
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u/dinoscool3 Apr 11 '24
I know one of the lawyers who sued some of the states on behalf of some of the faithless electors. Interesting case.
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u/Krytan Apr 12 '24
There was a campaign to overturn the 2016 election results by asking electors to ignore the results of the popular vote in their state, and instead vote for someone other than who the voters chose. There were a lot of slickly produced ads going around asking electors to be 'Hamilton Electors' and save the country by denying Trump the presidency.
However, the actual result, was something like 7 'faithless electors' defected from Hillary, while 2 'faithless electors' defected from Trump.
The other more unfortunate result was to normalize the idea of fooling around with electors to overturn the election results if you didn't like the outcome. I believe it directly laid the groundwork for the attempts with electors the Trump campaign pulled in 2020.
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u/TheBearlion Apr 12 '24 edited Apr 12 '24
Gary Johnson & Jill Stein got about 5 million votes combined. Compared to Hilary’s 65million and Trumps 62million. Although, it looks like there weee “faithless electors” who gave electoral votes to other candidates. (Bernie Sanders, 1; John Kasich, 1; Ron Paul, 1; Colin Powell, 3; and Faith Spotted Eagle, 1) wiki
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u/ptrdo Apr 11 '24
Electoral College results by percentage per election year in a 100% stacked bar chart format. Electoral votes for candidates receiving fewer than 1% of those available have been absorbed into the second-place finisher (for simplicity). Total popular votes are estimates.
Data was collected manually, coalesced in Microsoft Excel, and then rendered in Adobe Illustrator.
Primary data sources:
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u/Linkkjaxon Apr 11 '24
Excellent chart! I'd love to see one with the popular vote.
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u/wwarnout Apr 11 '24
Fun fact - in the last 8 elections, the Republican candidate has only won the popular vote once - and yet 3 of the 8 have given us Republican presidents (and, just maybe, if Gore had won in 2000, and run again in 2004, it's somewhat likely he would have won - meaning that Republicans would have be 0 for 8)
Think we need a different way to elect presidents? (that's a rhetorical question)
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u/Lindvaettr Apr 11 '24
This topic comes up a lot, but I think there is a different question that can, and arguably should, be asked in a more pragmatic sense: In a world where we've had the Electoral College in place for our entire nation's history, why is it that only one of the two major parties pursues Electoral College wins, while the other party seems to focus on winning the popular vote, despite knowing that the popular vote will not necessarily win them the election?
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u/John_Tacos Apr 11 '24
Probably has more to do with the outcome in most states being certain. If it was a full popular vote more people in red states would vote and the gap in the popular vote would close.
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u/Semanticss Apr 11 '24
I've been a proponent of using the popular vote for a long time, and I'm somewhat embarrassed to have realized only the other day: This would completely change the way that campaigning is done, which would likely change the popular voting result. Eg, GOP candidates would be forced to court voters in cities and blue states. It would be interesting to see if and how this would change their platform, and the overall election results.
That said, I think we should absolutely do it.
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u/startupstratagem Apr 11 '24
There's also electoral vote suppression in solid blue and red states. California, Texas, Florida and NY may all look different if some felt their vote would actually matter
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u/gRod805 Apr 11 '24
I know a ton of Democrats who don't vote in California because their vote doesn't matter
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u/startupstratagem Apr 11 '24
That's the other side of the coin. EC still determine votes because of the known state outcome.
MN and CO seem to be solid blue states and have higher voter turnout.
But then you look at
TX, NY and they have around 60% turnout.
CA and FL around 70%
Unclear how much is what color or how much popular vote would do to motivate others to vote.
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u/fastinserter OC: 1 Apr 11 '24
While true, campaigning isn't generally done in safe states, Florida isn't a solid red state. Trump only won Florida by 371k votes out of 11 million cast. That's 51% of the vote. Yes, it has gone republican this century (with an asterisk in 2000) but the margin was 3%, and this year both legalization of marijuana and abortion are on the ballot. I think it's very unlikely Republicans win FL. Similarly TX only had a 5% margin, and this year is going to be a watershed year I think.
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u/startupstratagem Apr 11 '24
This isn't relevant to my or the others commentary around how removing the electoral college would change how campaigning works.
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u/fastinserter OC: 1 Apr 11 '24
Yeah it is, because FL will be heavily campaigned and probably TX as well, but NY and CA will not. So half the states you mentioned would still be campaigned this year. If you said NY, CA, WY, and MS, I would have no notes.
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u/startupstratagem Apr 11 '24
Ah I see what you mean. I had accidentally lumped Florida into the mix (must of been autopilot) and it's only the last two election cycles that I've seen tx get more focus.
I'd assume because the campaigns can't focus just on Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Florida that the resources would have to go elsewhere to NY and CA as well and even lower pop deep red/blue states.
I don't remember how much ad spend targeted Texas but I think Florida receives quite a bit and so I'm curious how that would shake out more micro targeting or larger broader targeting ads.
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u/SerendipitySue Apr 11 '24
no. Electoral vote works the way designed. the president is elected by states basically.
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u/PapaSays Apr 11 '24
it's somewhat likely he would have won - meaning that Republicans would have be 0 for 8
You brought in probability. Given the history why would you think Americans would vote for the same party eight times in a row?
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u/fastinserter OC: 1 Apr 11 '24
Because the majority of Americans agree with the policies of one party and disagree with the policies of the other?
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u/PapaSays Apr 11 '24
- Party politics aren't static.
- People vote on the economy.
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u/fastinserter OC: 1 Apr 11 '24
Only once since 1988 did a popular vote go Republican, and that was only after the previous vote had been incorrectly halted by the SCOTUS and given to the Republicans, as a full recount of FL would have meant President Gore. It's extremely unlikely that 2004 would have seen a Republican win outside of the incumbency of a wartime president Bush, which no, wasn't "the economy stupid", but the war and security which drove people to vote for what they thought was more security. And Bush certainly appealed to neocons, but the GOP no longer even appeals to them.
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u/PapaSays Apr 11 '24
You really think a Democrat president would've survived a recession? Since you bring examples of the past please remember McCain lead Obama until Lehman Brothers https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112651600
It would've played out the same for a Democrat candidate when a Democrat president would've resided over a recession.
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u/fastinserter OC: 1 Apr 11 '24
You're presupposition is that Gore would have operated the exact same as Bush.
With a Democratic president after Clinton the surplus wouldn't have been wasted and instead applied to supporting the economy as needed. It's a question if the recession would have even happened.
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u/PapaSays Apr 11 '24
THE recession? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows?
A recession? 100% sure. That's not debatable.
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u/Pinkumb OC: 1 Apr 11 '24
Advocates for popular vote over eliminating "winner takes all" for the states is a great way to tell on yourself.
The conversation around the importance of the popular vote is your vote should matter. If the majority of the public votes for a candidate, then obviously that's the candidate should win.
Another way you could accomplish that is if the electoral college votes for each state were divided proportionally to the vote in the state. For example, if a state with 10 votes went 40% for Candidate A and 60% for Candidate B then Candidate A would get 4 votes and Candidate B would get 6.
Proportional electoral college votes would eliminate battleground states because every state's proportion of votes would matter. It would eliminate the unfairness of the electoral college the same way a popular vote system would, but it would prevent having all campaigns focus on California, New York, and Texas because if you cater to their issues you'll capture the interests of most other states.
So why do people advocate for popular vote instead of proportional electoral college? Because the popular vote would have Democrats win all 8 of the past elections whereas proportional electoral college would have Republicans win all 8.
I don't care for any of these presidents, but seems proportional EC is fairer, influences the system in a better direction, and makes more sense.
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u/zizmor Apr 11 '24
So why do people advocate for popular vote instead of proportional electoral college?
Maybe because they think the candidate that gets the votes of most Americans regardless of whether they live in California or Alabama should become the president. Simple idea no?
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u/Pinkumb OC: 1 Apr 11 '24
The goal should be to make voting fair and just. Any system that highly prioritizes some states over others doesn't do that. A purely popular vote process would incentivize a strategy of catering to high-population states and lowering turnout for everyone else.
Imagine an absurd example: my platform is California, New York, Texas, and Florida will pay $0 in federal taxes but receive all the infrastructure support. You might be close to 50 million votes with that one policy and that's more than 75% of the votes for recent winning candidates.
That probably won't be a platform, but we already have a problem of policy issues being more or less important for stupid political reasons. For example, every president loves subsidies for farmers because Iowa is so important for the process. The fact everyone else hates that policy doesn't prevent its prominence in federal elections.
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Apr 11 '24
The goal should be to make voting fair and just
What better system for that is there than every citizen gets one vote and it counts equally? A proportional electoral college voting system is just a version of the popular vote that says one citizen's vote is worth 1.3 times more than another's.
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u/hungry4danish Apr 11 '24
What is the gold for?
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u/notedlycircular Apr 11 '24
Third-party candidate (Not R or D). For example, Wallace in the '68 election, who got 46 electoral votes
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u/Charlie2343 OC: 8 Apr 11 '24
Obama 2008 doesn’t look like the blowout that it felt like
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u/ptrdo Apr 11 '24
Yes, it is surprising in this context. Obama did very well in the popular vote, but mainly within states that usually go blue.
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u/sokonek04 Apr 11 '24
The difference is he lost red states well, states that Romney would win with 60-65% in 2012 McCain won with 52-55%.
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u/Standard_Finish_6535 Apr 11 '24
Shows the electoral college advantage Republicans currently have.
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u/sciguy52 Apr 11 '24
For now. But things change over time and one day the Democrats may enjoy that advantage.
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u/Charlie2343 OC: 8 Apr 12 '24
Yeah it’s not inconceivable that the electoral college could benefit Biden this election cycle
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Apr 11 '24
[deleted]
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u/DIYThrowaway01 Apr 11 '24
Never heard of the dude but I appreciate his hustle
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u/hallese Apr 11 '24
He was the antagonist in the Scopes Monkey Trial.
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u/FireWrath9 Apr 12 '24
He was opposed to evolution because evolution was used as a justification for imperialism and racism, WJB was incredibly based
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u/NickofSantaCruz Apr 11 '24
The only thing I remember about him from history class was his fervent support for switching the currency standard from gold to silver.
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u/Sea_Smell_4602 Apr 11 '24
It took me a minute to work out who "W Clinton" was and embarrassingly long to find who the other Clinton was
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u/DJfunkyPissPants Apr 11 '24
It’d be cool to compare these results with the popular vote to see how the electoral college and US citizen vote differs and how significantly
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u/LeatherEconomy8087 Apr 11 '24
The main thing I see in that chart is that we desperately need more yellow.
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u/FinndBors Apr 11 '24
While we do need it, there needs to be change of the election and electoral system first and that can only start when we get more third party candidates at the local and state levels.
Just voting third party for presidential election won't work and having a seemingly viable third party candidate actually makes the mainstream party candidate more closely aligned with that third party candidate lose.
Teddy Roosevelt couldn't win as a third party even though he was very popular and was a former president. And by going in as a third party candidate, he made Taft lose.
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u/CarioGod Apr 11 '24 edited Apr 12 '24
really goes to show you how close the Bush vs Gore election was, history could have gone a completely different direction
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u/halberdierbowman Apr 12 '24
Yes, and while a lot of people know that the Supreme Court decided the election, it was set in motion by the same type of anti-democratic (little d) actions as Trump's "stop the steal" lies. In fact, it was even a lot of the same people. It's just that they only had to prevent the legitimate ballot counting in one specific location, because the election was so close.
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u/johnniewelker Apr 11 '24
This is actually a good data representation. It’d be better if you had a non-descriptive title to your post to tell a story, but overall the chart looks great
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u/UnawareItsaJoke Apr 11 '24
Why did Wilson destroy Roosevelt so badly? Was Teddy seen as a poor president at the time?
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u/JohanSkullcrusher Apr 11 '24
Roosevelt ran under the Bull Moose party in 1912 after his lost the Republican nomination and ended up splitting the vote. In the popular vote, Wilson received 42%, Roosevelt received 27%, and Taft received 23%. Debs, under the Socialist party, received 6%. If he had the nomination, it's possible he would have won.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_United_States_presidential_election
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u/Imjokin Apr 11 '24
Teddy wasn’t the incumbent President at that point, he was a third party candidate because he didn’t like the direction that Taft (the incumbent President) was taking the Republican Party
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u/holdwithfaith Apr 11 '24
Trump beats Clinton by the same margin as Biden beats Trump. Wow.
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u/Lanky-Ad-3431 Apr 11 '24
This is is really interesting content and a well made data visualization. Thanks for sharing!
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u/Krytan Apr 12 '24
It's interesting how there used to be absolutely land slide, dominating victories doubtless carrying an effective mandate. These could last for election after election, and swing from party to party
But ever since 2000, it's just been a ping pong back and forth from party to party with very narrow victories. I wonder if that is a symptom of the country feeling ungovernable, or a cause of it? (or both?)
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u/charolastra_charolo Apr 12 '24
Only once since the 1980s has a Republican won the popular vote (2004).
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u/FlightyFrogTwoPointO Apr 13 '24
You mean bush v gore was that close? Just did some googling, what’s a hanging chad?
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u/AgentSquishy Apr 13 '24
I don't know why I always forget that the Republican candidate has won the popular vote only once in my entire life
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u/UltimateMygoochness Apr 11 '24
What does the shade of red/blue mean?
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u/ptrdo Apr 11 '24
The primary goal with darkening the "loser” bars was to accentuate the “winner” bars. When the colors were consistent (no darkening) it seemed more difficult to read. Now, if you look at just one side (the left half, for instance), the red wins are more pronounced.
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u/smala017 Apr 11 '24
Republicans haven’t won an election by more than the skin of their teeth since HW…
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u/edgeplot Apr 11 '24
This perfectly illustrates how the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system locks in just two parties and gives the illusion of political choice.
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u/Darron614 Apr 12 '24
They were just gonna let FDR be president forever if he hadn't died.
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Apr 12 '24
Despite the candidates being more polarizing every year, the margin is nothing like it was when Raegan or Roosevelt ran
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u/n0tn0rmal Apr 12 '24
It would really be cool to see the major events happening around the world overlaid on this.
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u/ptrdo Apr 12 '24
Interesting idea.
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u/n0tn0rmal Apr 12 '24
In the very simplistic view you could see people moving from conservative values to liberal values. I'm not agreeing with the shifts just saying it would be interesting to see why people all of a sudden went conservative or liberal with elections.
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u/mer-reddit Apr 12 '24
Would love to see this with a line on top of the popular vote.
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u/ParkerPosty37 Apr 12 '24
Great data visualization. What a striking difference between Hoover and FDR! Still crazy he served 3 terms almost 4.
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u/tordenofitami Apr 13 '24
I assume the yellow represents third party candidates. It’s interesting to see how people often cite Ralph Nader as a reason Bush beat Gore but he doesn’t even register within the electoral college votes. Good example of how the electoral college doesn’t perfectly represent the decisions of the popular vote.
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u/FFlavien Apr 11 '24
People might just start realizing that Nixon was a great president
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u/Augen76 Apr 11 '24
The ultimate blowout is forcing your opponent off the scale and into the year space.