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Divergence between the popular vote and the electoral college

In America, winning the popular vote does not always lead to the White House

By THE DATA TEAM

HILLARY CLINTON’S solid lead in the polls has evaporated, with national-polling averages putting her just one or two percentage points ahead of Donald Trump. This has changed the tone in reporting from measuring up the White House curtains for Mrs Clinton to gloomily pondering the possibility of a Trump presidency, at least among Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans. But America’s presidential election is decided through the electoral college, where the winning candidate accumulates votes based on the states’ representation in Congress, not by the popular vote. On this measure Mrs Clinton’s lead has also narrowed, yet betting markets still anticipate her capturing a comfortable 320 of the 538 electoral-college votes.

Indeed, the electoral college often magnifies the size of the victory of the eventual winner, skewing our historic memory of elections. For example, Richard Nixon appeared to have trounced Hubert Humphrey in 1968 judging by the electoral-college count, where he won by 20 percentage points, but not in the popular vote, where the candidates were separated by less than 1%. Presidents, unsurprisingly, tend to point to their victory in the electoral college rather than the popular vote for a mandate. In 2004 George W. Bush bragged of the political capital he had “earned”, even though he won by just 2.5 percentage points. By that measure, Barack Obama’s seven-point victory over John McCain in 2008 could be construed as a massive vote for change. And with the 2016 race looking so tight, the eventual victor may be in for a short honeymoon. Thin margins make for weak mandates.

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