Presidential Elections and Majority Rule

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward B. Foley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Federal Structure

The Electoral College governing America today was adopted by Thomas Jefferson’s supporters, after the 1800 election almost derailed his presidency. The Jeffersonians were motivated by majority rule. Given the emergence of two-party competition between Federalists and themselves, the Jeffersonians intended the Electoral College to award the presidency to the majority party. Given the federal structure of the United States, they envisioned the Electoral College as implementing a compound form of majority rule: a candidate would win by amassing a majority of electoral votes from states where the candidate’s party was in the majority.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-178
Author(s):  
Edward B. Foley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Winner Take All ◽  
Take All

Election College reform should be considered in the context of overall concerns about American democracy. Civic culture is essential, as is strengthening democratic institutions. While the United States must address other institutional weaknesses, including gerrymandering, the power of the presidency requires urgent attention to the current deficiency of the Electoral College. The problem is that plurality winner-take-all permits the kind of accident that occurred in 1844, where the winner is not the candidate preferred by a majority of voters in enough states for an Electoral College majority. Insofar as this kind of accident may have happened again in 2016, recognizing this institutional problem requires a different analysis and solution than if a majority of Americans want to elect a president with anti-democratic tendencies. Currently, there is a mismatch between America’s expectation of two-party competition and the multicandidate reality of contemporary presidential elections. Majority rule is necessary to realign reality and expectations.

The Election of a President

1972 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 493-501
Author(s):  
John J. Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Population Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arithmetic Geometry ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Student Interest

THE election of a president in the United States has many mathematical aspects. It is certainly appropriate for teachers to exploit student interest in presidential elections to advance the aims of mathematics classes. The electoral college, apportionment of representatives, population data, and many other features of a presidential election can provide interesting and profitable mathematical exercises. Without difficulty one can devise good problems in arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and statistics.

scholarly journals Party Competition, Personal Votes, and Strategic Disloyalty in the U.S. States

2020 ◽  
pp. 106591292095321
Author(s):  
Richard Burke ◽  
Justin H. Kirkland ◽  
Jonathan B. Slapin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
State Legislators ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Strong Incentive ◽  
Majority Control ◽  
Party Members ◽  
The U.S

Legislators will sometimes vote against their party’s position on roll-call votes to differentiate themselves from the party mainstream and to accrue a “personal vote.” Research suggests that the use of rebellion to generate a personal vote is more common (1) among majority party members and (2) among ideological extremists. But these majority party extremists only have a strong incentive to rebel in situations where the accrual of a personal vote is electorally useful. In this manuscript, we evaluate variation in rebellion rates of state legislators in the United States conditional on ideological extremism and majority control. Using donation-based measures of ideology and roll call–based measures of party loyalty over a twenty-year period across more than 30,000 legislators, we find that when legislators have little incentive to differentiate themselves from their parties, this “strategic” party disloyalty among majority party ideological extremists is limited. However, when legislators have strong incentives to craft a personal vote, ideological extremists defect from their party more often than their moderate counterparts. In particular, we find greater evidence for this type of strategic party disloyalty in states with high intra-party competition and low inter-party competition and less evidence in states with high inter-party competition.

scholarly journals The fragile blue wall: analyzing geographies of the 2020 US presidential election

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-44
Author(s):  
John Agnew ◽  
Michael Shin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Election Polls

US presidential elections are peculiar contests based on mediation by an Electoral College in which votes are aggregated on a state-by-state basis. In 2020, as in 2016, the outcome was decided by a set of states where the two candidates were equally competitive: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Two geographical stories tend to dominate accounts of what happened in 2020. The first story is based on red (Republican) versus blue (Democratic) states, and the second story relies upon rural versus urban biases in support for the two parties. After showing how and where Donald Trump outperformed the expectations of pre-election polls, we consider these two geographical stories both generally, and more specifically, in relation to the crucial swing states. Through an examination of the successes of Joe Biden in Arizona and Georgia, two states long thought of as “red”, and the role of the suburbs and local particularities in producing this result, we conclude that the polarization of the United States into two hostile electorates is exaggerated. 

A computational tool for weak signals classification – Detecting threats and opportunities on politics in the cases of the United States and Brazilian presidential elections

Futures ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
pp. 102607
Author(s):  
Pedro Ivo Garcia-Nunes ◽  
Pedro Artico Rodrigues ◽  
Kaulitz Guimarães Oliveira ◽  
Ana Estela Antunes da Silva
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Computational Tool ◽  
Weak Signals

Bayesian Forcasting Model – 2020 Presidential Elections in the United States of America

2021 ◽  
Vol 704 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-104
Author(s):  
Maria Raczyńska
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Bayesian Models ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Forecasting Model ◽  
Bayesian Forecasting ◽  
Technical Point ◽  
Made In

The article describes and explains a prior centric Bayesian forecasting model for the 2020 US elections.The model is based on the The Economist forecasting project, but strongly differs from it. From the technical point of view, it uses R and Stan programming and Stan software. The article’s focus is on theoretical decisions made in the process of constructing the model and outcomes. It describes why Bayesian models are used and how they are used to predict US presidential elections.

The Transition of the Presidency, 2020-2021

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-59
Author(s):  
Pfiffner James P.
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Change Leadership ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Half Century ◽  
United State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Presidential Transitions ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Past Half

The peaceful transition of power from one set of rulers to another is the essence of democracy. The United States has enjoyed the consensus that elections are the means to change leadership of the country for more than two centuries. The 2020-2021 transition of the presidency marks an exception to that consensus. President Trump refused to accept the reality of his 2020 defeat at the polls, despite the fact that Joe Biden won more than 7 million more votes than Trump and won the electoral college by a vote of 306 to 232. Trump declared that he had won the election and that his opponent, Joseph Biden, had conspired to steal the election through fraudulent ballots. This paper will briefly characterize the development of presidential transitions over the past half century. It will then examine the extensive efforts of President Trump to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in the volent attack on the United State Capitol on January 6, 2021. Finally, it will show how Trump tried to thwart the incoming Biden administration. It will conclude that Trump’s actions in 2020 and 2021 presented a serious threat to the American polity.

Why Two Parties? Ambition, Policy, and the Presidency

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Aldrich ◽  
Daniel J. Lee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
New Parties ◽  
The Us ◽  
Duverger's Law ◽  
National Electorate

Duverger’s Law suggests that two parties will dominate under first-past-the-post (FPTP) within an electoral district, but the law does not necessarily establish two-party competition at the national level. United States is unique among FPTP countries in having the only durable and nearly pure, two-party system. Following this observation, we answer two questions. First, what contributes to the same two parties competing in districts all across the country and at different levels of office? Second, why is the US two-party system so durable over time, dominated by the same two parties? That is, “Why two parties?” As an answer, we propose the APP: ambition, the presidency, and policy. The presidency with its national electorate and electoral rules that favor two-party competition establishes two national major parties, which frames the opportunity structure that influences party affiliation decisions of ambitious politicians running for lower offices. Control over the policy agenda helps reinforce the continuation of a particular two-party system in equilibrium by blocking third parties through divergence on the main issue dimension and the suppression of latent issue dimensions that could benefit new parties. The confluence of the three factors explains why the United States is so uniquely a durable two-party system.

scholarly journals Populism in the United States: Binary Constructions by Donald Trump in the Domestic and Foreign Policies

2021 ◽  
Vol VI (III) ◽  
pp. 59-71
Author(s):  
Muhammad Nadeem Mirza ◽  
Lubna Abid Ali ◽  
Irfan Hasnain Qaisrani
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Andrew Jackson ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
White House ◽  
Us History ◽  
The People ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign Policies

This study intends to explore the rise of Donald Trump to the White House. Why was Donald Trump considered a populist leader, and how did his populist rhetoric and actions impact the contours of American domestic and foreign policies? The study adopted qualitative exploratory and explanatory research techniques. Specific methods utilised to conduct the study remained political personality profiling. It finds that the populist leaders construct the binaries in the society by dividing the nation into two groups: �us� the people, against �them� the corrupt elite or other groups presented as a threat to the lives and livelihood of the nation. Though populism as a unique brand of politics remained active through most of the US history, yet these were only two occasions that populists were successful in winning the American presidential elections � Andrew Jackson in 1828 and Donald Trump in 2016. Structural and historical reasons became the biggest cause behind the election of Donald Trump, who successfully brought a revolution in American domestic and foreign policies. And if structural issues in the United States are not addressed, there is a clear chance that Trump � who is not withering away � will come back to contest and challenge any competitors in the 2024 presidential elections.

Adjustment to Stagflation and Neoliberal Reforms in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 602-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
NOBUHIRO HIWATARI
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Neoliberal Reforms ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Ruling Party

This article explains why the stagflation and neoliberal reforms that reinforced party polarization in the United Kingdom and the United States instead led to party convergence in Japan. In Japan, industry-centered adjustment and bureaucratic coordination distributed the costs of policy changes across societal groups and facilitated party convergence, whereas the lack of such societal and state institutions in the United Kingdom and the United States led to policy changes with polarizing consequences. Focusing on industry-centered adjustment brings the unions back into Japanese politics and provides an alternative to the pluralism-neocorporatism dichotomy of organizing societal interests. Bureaucratic coordination not only includes the opposition in the framework but also provides a more nuanced view than is assumed in the debate over whether the ruling party of the bureaucracy dominates the Japanese state. When combined, these conceptualizations of market and state go a long way toward explaining the dynamics of party competition.

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