Is There Gerrymandering At The Highest Level Of American Politics?

[sandyRoe]

How does the Electoral College in the USA turn a majority of the popular vote into a runners up position?

[jno]

because it does it on a state-by-state basis rather than just count the number of votes, which is what you might expect in what is basically a personal polularity contest. It's supposed to protect states' rights but it does sometimes seem to have been created to hand the presidency to Republicans who've failed to get as many votes as Democrats. (The same happened with George W. Bush.)

[sunny-dave]

FAKE NEWS - The Donald is going to have AB shut down if you persist in calling him Gerry ...

[Peter Pedant]

this happens sometimes
and in English politics

I think Callaghan got fewer votes in his precarious tenure than the conservatives

and I thought the one that George W Bush 'won' it was the same

but so what - a ministry may be formed in England even if there is no majority or may NOT fall when it is in a minority = because the MPs dont want a general election and perhaps lose their seats

[Peter Pedant]

Oh and an electoral college member can vote for the man he wasnt elected to vote for
Litigation about that - around 1825 - and found to be lawful

( yearn and yearn agoo - - the electoral college was set up so that under certain conditons the winner of most votes became president and the leader of the OTHER party became vice president.

also afterLincoln 1865 it is was not at all certain if the vice President became president or whether he remained a VP and acted up as President.
this is not so crazy when you think that if Boris had died the deputy prime minister would NOT automatically become prime minister

[jim360]

Yes. Not to mention levels that are lower down. What's fun is how brazen the parties are about doing it, although at the moment it seems that it's the Republicans who are best at it.

[Peter Pedant]

kennedy 1960
stop buying Dad or there will be a landslide ....
telegram to JOe Kennedy senr

[THECORBYLOON]

A candidate needs to receive 270 Electoral College votes to become President. Each state has a number of Electors and in all but a couple of States the winning candidate in a State receives all that State's Electoral College votes.

That means a candidate could win by a single vote in each of the eleven States with the highest number of Electors, lose by a landslide in the other States and still get the 270 votes needed.

[ToraToraTora]

both us and the septics have FPTP for constituencies read EC votes. For electing a government it is the best way, all the others are some form of PR and rarely produce a government. For 1 individual however it is an odd way to do it but as we know the US always does the right thing once all the alternatives have been tried. Good job last time mind or we'd have had that awful woman in the WH.

[cassa333]

Because in the states with fewer people they sort of get ‘extra votes’.

It’s not a dodge but to address the inequality of population Within states. Otherwise the large metropolis city states like California would basically always get the President they voted for and the smaller populated states would be left out.