John's Blog

People who say plaintively that in 2000 Al Gore “won the popular vote” against George W. Bush as though that meant something important — please. The nationwide popular vote in a presidential election means about as much as the total number of runs scored by each team in the World Series. If one team wins big in some games but doesn’t win four games, it could score more runs than the series winner. But nobody would say they “won the run count.” Similarly, while the popular vote says something about popular preference, it says more about campaign strategies: The candidates concentrate on the states where the vote is likely to be close, especially the states with lots of Electoral College votes. If the president were elected by popular vote, the campaigns would be very different, and so would the popular vote. With the existing system, the popular vote means little.