Friday, November 25, 2016

Plurality take all elections and the 2016 elections

I found this spreadsheet online 


I don't know if this is accurate or not, but I notice that there are 13 states considered swing states. Only one of these states, Iowa, shows a clear majority of the votes for either candidate. Otherwise, no one has a majority. Whoever won those states, won with a plurality. In the non-swing states, very few show the winner with only a plurality. Those are: New Mexico, Utah, Virginia,
In fact, in those states where no one has a majority, we don't know who the majority of the voters would have voted for in a race that only included Clinton and Trump.
This is a problem with plurality take all elections. You can get a winner, who is not supported by the a majority of the voters.
When I lived in France, in 1976, I was impressed that they had two rounds of voting. After the first round, no one had a majority. Then they had a runoff election between the two lead candidates, so they could determine who would really get the majority.
I have a long standing concern about this, because Hitler was elected with a plurality. A majority of Germans never voted for him.

Glad to see Maine adopting ranked voting

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/maine-makes-it-harder-elect-trump-likes-so-will-rest-us-follow-suit-1593600?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=rss&utm_content=/rss/yahoous&yptr=yahoo

This is one way of dealing with a situation where no candidate has a majority.

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