Last week the Times had Trumps chances at about 7%. If you think the odds are more like 35%, that's 5x better. Still a long shot, but not impossible.
Sadly, its only going to get worse now.
People dont like being told what to do. They are sick and tired of public servants who have transmogrified into Lord- of-the-Manor type personalities and not just in America. Watch out as more establishment candidates fail across the world in the next couple of years.
But something else: with about a century of polling history my thesis is that wariness has set in and people are playing a more crafty game. They refrain from speaking their minds to pollsters especially if their positions are unpopular or contentious; there is nothing to be gained from honesty to strangers. This is the real cause of poll failures.
But then when I hear the popular vote, I SMH. Hillary should have won if every vote counted equally. It would have been a nail-biter since she re-surged at the end.
There should be nothing between each person, their vote and the total count which is the voice of the people. No delegates, no electoral colleges, no State borders, no nothing. Anything else is not a pure democracy.
We failed democracy.
This is the very definition of rigging.
The democratic primary was rigged to favor Hillary (the establishment), and Bernie lost. The national election was rigged to "balance" the voice of States and Trump won. That is the only reason. It's also the only reason Bush won in 2000.
The system is already adapted so it works best for "us" except where us is these bubbles of people.
If we were to make "us" all of us, then what we need is pure democracy. Otherwise it's the Divided States of America. Every election the State borders could not be more prominent.
I was making the distinction between a representative democracy (where we elect representatives to make day-to-day decisions for us, such as the President, Senators, and Representatives.) and pure democracy (where each of us would have to vote on every decision). The Electoral College is something else all together.
Your phrase "every election" indicates to me that you're in favor of representative democracy (as am I). I don't think pure democracy scales.
Have I understood you correctly?
Whenever we are measuring voice or volume, any "system" is rigging. That's the only point I am making.
Gerrymandering, a Senate who can say "Fuck you" to a supreme court nomination for a year, The person with the most votes not winning, brutal assaults on voter rights, etc...
> Every election the State borders could not be more prominent
A popular vote system for president would change that.
It's actually hard to say. Voter turnout would be radically different. Republicans in California now have a voice, Democrats in Texas do too.
> Republicans in California now have a voice, Democrats in Texas do too.
This sounds better to me. It sounds like how it ought to be.
If Hillary lost the popular vote, then I'd be content. It's just hard to fathom how "less popular candidate won" and "democracy" can be talking about the same thing (America).
Why do you assume pure democracy is desirable? Do you also prefer every law to be voted on by the entire population (it's a valid point of view, albeit one I disagree with)?
The whole point of a republic is to temper the will of the mob. Our electoral college — which represents the fact that the United States are a federal republic — forces candidates to campaign across the states, and the spend the most time in precisely those states which are most evenly-split (the swing states, which is another way of saying the political centre).
Eliminating the Electoral College — as, sadly, many wish to do — would do irreparable harm to the United States, perhaps even more severe than popular election of senators.
Your support for the electoral college is still support for all votes not being equal at the voter level. My claim is that there is nothing more important than the voices being equal if we are to claim we are a unity of equal people. Any system on top of that is a filter, and is tampering with what is most important. Why must entire States be colored red or blue. That's a filter, and an act of muddling. We're dividing States when what we need to be is United.
Even if we elected by popular vote, candidates will still have to campaign and they will still have to go somewhere. Their strategy can be State based, and certainly their choices may differ without this "system" but even with the system in place they are choosing specific States over others. I don't see how these specific States deserve more attention than those that are completely ignored. For there still are States completely ignored with the Electoral College.