Following up on Monday's post about the Maskin and Sen proposal to use Condorcet (preference) voting in presidential elections, I wondered whether Abraham Lincoln would still have won in 1860 if preferences had been aggregated, rather than giving each state's electoral votes to the plurality winner.
As most readers no doubt know, it was a four-way contest — among Lincoln, Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell — in which Lincoln got just under 40% of the tabulated popular vote. (In fact, his plurality was somewhat lower than that, given that South Carolina did not choose its electors by popular vote and Lincoln would have gotten zero votes there.)
In any case, Lincoln carried the north, winning eighteen states with 180 electoral votes, and he was completely shut out in the sixteen southern and border states, with 123 electoral votes. It is pretty obvious that Lincoln was the bottom choice in every state he lost. His high-water mark was 23% of the vote in Delaware, and in most of the other states he got no popular votes at all (often because he was not on the ballot).
But what about the states Lincoln won, where the anti-Lincoln popular vote was split among the other three candidates? Might Condorcet voting have moved any of those states out of Lincoln's column, perhaps swinging the election away from the Republicans? It is a fair assumption, after all, that nearly all Douglas voters would have named Breckinridge as their next choice, and vice versa (both were Democrats, after all), and that Bell's voters likewise would have put Lincoln last. If the anti-Lincoln votes had been aggregated, in other words, would that have been enough to tip the electoral college?
It would not have. Lincoln won an absolute majority in fifteen states, which would have given him their electoral votes even under Condorcet rules. At most, Lincoln would have lost only three states (California, New Jersey, and Oregon) with 14 electoral votes combined – reducing his total to 166, while he only needed 152 to win.
Addendum: Lincoln's narrowest majorities were in Illinois and Indiana, at barely over 50%, with Stephen Douglas (also from Illinois) coming in second in both states. Losing both Illinois and Indiana would have been enough to throw the election into the House of Representatives. Although Republicans carried the house decisively in 1860, the president would have been chosen by the members who had been elected in 1858. The Republican caucus (which included a few Know Nothings and Whigs) also had a majority in that Congress, but the Democrats controlled 18 of the 34 delegations, which would have been enough to select the president, although it might have taken them a few ballots to agree on someone.
Why not just choose the system that affords a win to the candidate favored by "Constitutional" scholars and academics?
As no system will ever be "Constitutional" in the sense they understand that term (the provisions "evolve" according to whatever outcome they favor), the system can be adjusted to accommodate the voting patterns of the time.
For example, the losers in this election whine about "Gerrymandering" with reference to a true national disgust with rhetoric and positions adopted by the Party: positions that appeal to mainly urban voters and not to those in 3,084 of the country’s 3,141 counties, approximately) (think the Capital in "Hunger Games"). "Gerrymandering" had nothing to do with the loss of the Senate, 2/3 of the governorships and nearly all the statehouses (900 or so seats lost in the last eight years).
So too, the "Electoral College" canard is a bogus as the day is long. The Party's candidate racked up a huge win in California (If you leave aside California, then Trump won the popular vote by 1.4 million votes). California, for those who don't know (and this apparently includes the entire East Coast liberal establishment) is basically a one party state, as noted by IBD. There were two Democrats — and zero Republicans — running to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer. There were no Republicans on the ballot for House seats in nine of California's congressional districts.
In fact, as pointed out by IBD, there was no reason for anyone in California to vote for a Republican, as the Party's candidate was bound to win and win big no matter what. Talk about voter suppression!
As might be expected, the Party and the alternative spent no time or money on a campaign in California.
Now that's over, what do the sore losers want? Mainly, they advocate for a system where California, New York and a few other states will decide for the rest of the country – including 3,084 of the country’s 3,141 counties, where approximately one half of the people live). No thanks.
How can the Party expect to govern under these circumstances? About one half of the people chose a candidate that was maligned by every major new organization and literally called every name in the book. Perhaps some of them believed the calumny but voted for that candidate anyway. It seemed that the Party has so alienated such a wide swath of the electorate that its candidate couldn't even win this election.
What will it take to wake the Party up? Can anything get thru to these people? Of course, there will always be fringe, specious proposals to change the rules when a Party loses, but really, seriously, when is enough of this sort of thing enough? After recounts and resistance and all matter of "not my President" slogans – coming from the same folks who lectured the country on accepting the results (before they lost) – one comes away with a feeling that this is a slippery bunch with no principles other than self interest.