The Election of a President

1972 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 493-501
Author(s):  
John J. Sullivan

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.

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-44
Author(s):  
John Agnew ◽  
Michael Shin

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. 


Author(s):  
Edward B. Foley

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.


Author(s):  
Corwin Smidt

This article examines the role of Catholics within the 2020 presidential election in the United States. Although Catholics were once a crucial and dependable component of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition, their vote in more recent years has been much more splintered. Nevertheless, Catholics have been deemed to be an important “swing vote” in American politics today, as in recent presidential elections they have aligned with the national popular vote. This article therefore focuses on the part that Catholics played within the 2020 presidential election process. It addresses the level of political change and continuity within the ranks of Catholics over the past several elections, how they voted in the Democratic primaries during the initial stages of the 2020 presidential election, their level of support for different candidates over the course of the campaign, how they ultimately came to cast their ballots in the 2020 election, and the extent to which their voting patterns in 2020 differed from that of 2016.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Heather M. Claypool ◽  
Alejandro Trujillo ◽  
Michael J. Bernstein ◽  
Steven Young

Presidential elections in the United States pit two (or more) candidates against each other. Voters elect one and reject the others. This work tested the hypothesis that supporters of a losing presidential candidate may experience that defeat as a personal rejection. Before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, voters reported their current feelings of rejection and social pain, along with potential predictors of these feelings. Relative to Trump supporters, Clinton (losing candidate) supporters reported greater feelings of rejection, lower mood, and reduced fundamental needs post-election, while controlling for pre-election levels of these variables. Moreover, as self–candidate closeness and liberal political orientation increased, so too did feelings of rejection and social pain among Clinton supporters. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding human sensitivity to belonging threats and for the vicarious rejection literature.


Author(s):  
Allan J. Lichtman

The Keys to the White House are an index-based prediction system that retrospectively account for the popular-vote winners of every US presidential election from 1860 to 1980 and prospectively forecast the winners of every presidential election from 1984 through 2008. The Keys demonstrate that American presidential elections do not turn on events of the campaign, but rather on the performance of the party controlling the White House. The Keys hold important lessons for politics in the United States and worldwide. A preliminary forecast based on the Keys indicates that President Obama is a likely winner in 2012, but also reveals the specific problems at home at abroad that could thwart his re-election.


2021 ◽  
pp. 479-501
Author(s):  
Béatrice Sommier

Este articulo tiene como objetivo comprender los intercambios interculturales entre Estados-Unidos y Francia en relación con el marketing electoral numérico. Se interesa en las elecciones presidenciales estadounidenses entre 2008 y 2016 y francesas de 2012 y 2017. El artículo se basa en un análisis bibliográfico para identificar la situación estadounidense y en una encuesta cualitativa realizada durante las elecciones francesas de 2017. El articulo muestra las semejanzas técnicas entre los dos países. Sin embargo, debido a un marco jurídico distinto entre Estados-Unidos y Francia, las prácticas de marketing electoral numérico no son las mismas. Este trabajo intenta explicar estas diferencias entre los dos países apoyándose en la Teoría Cultural de la antropóloga Mary Douglas. Acaba por analizar cómo en Francia los actores económicos, políticos y el Estado negocian hasta llegar a una situación donde las diferencias interculturales con Estados-Unidos disminuyen This article aims to understand the intercultural exchanges from the United States to France in terms of digital electoral marketing in the context of the American presidential elections from 2008 to 2016 and the French elections of 2012 and 2017. Based on documentary research to identify the American situation and on a qualitative survey carried out during the French presidential election of 2017, it shows the existence of technical similarities between the two countries. However, due to a different legal framework in the United States and France, practices of digital electoral marketing diverge. Then the article tries to understand the origin of these disparities between the two countries by mobilizing the Cultural Theory of the anthropologist Mary Douglas: it analyses how the French economic and political actors and the State seek to negotiate together and attenuate intercultural gaps with the American situation. Cet article a comme objectif de comprendre les échanges interculturels entre les Etats-Unis et la France concernant le marketing électoral numérique. Il s'intéresse aux élections présidentielles étatsuniennes entre 2008 et 2016 et françaises de 2012 et 2017. Cet article se base sur une recherche documentaire pour identifier la situation américiane et sur une enquête qualitative réalisée durant les élections françaises de 2017. La recherche montre des similitudes techniques entre les deux pays. Cependant, du fait d'un cadre jurditique distinct entre les Etats-Unis et la France, les pratiques de marketing électoral numérique ne sont pas les mêmes. Ce travail cherche alors à expliquer les différences entre ces deux pays en s'appuyant sur la Théorie Culturelle de l'anthropologue Mary Douglas. Puis il analyse comment en France, les acteurs économiques, politiques et l'Etat négocient jusqu'à parvenir à une situation où les différences interculturelles avec les Etats-Unis diminuent.


Author(s):  
Allan J. Lichtman

The Keys to the White House are an index-based prediction system that retrospectively account for the popular-vote winners of every US presidential election from 1860 to 1980 and prospectively forecast the winners of every presidential election from 1984 through 2008. The Keys demonstrate that American presidential elections do not turn on events of the campaign, but rather on the performance of the party controlling the White House. The Keys hold important lessons for politics in the United States and worldwide. A preliminary forecast based on the Keys indicates that President Obama is a likely winner in 2012, but also reveals the specific problems at home at abroad that could thwart his re-election.


2020 ◽  
pp. 000276422097506
Author(s):  
Camilo Prado-Román ◽  
Raúl Gómez-Martínez ◽  
Carmen Orden-Cruz

The media and election campaign managers conduct several polls in the days leading up to the presidential elections. These preelection polls have a different predictive capacity, despite the fact that under a Big Data approach, sources that indicate voting intention can be found. In this article, we propose a free method to anticipate the winner of the presidential election based on this approach. To demonstrate the predictive capacity of this method, we conducted the study for two countries: the United States of America and Canada. To this end, we analysed which candidate had the most Google searches in the months leading up to the polling day. In this article, we have taken into account the past four elections in the United States and the past five in Canada, since Google first published its search statistics in 2004. The results show that this method has predicted the real winner in all the elections held since 2004 and highlights that it is necessary to monitor the next elections for the presidency of the United States in November 2020 and to have more accurate information on the future results.


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-33
Author(s):  
Thomas Joseph Lonergan

Mitt Romney or Barack Obama: this is the choice Pennsylvanian voters will have in November as the 2012 presidential election draws closer. The voters of Pennsylvania will be at the height of importance in the history of American presidential elections, playing a key role as one of the leading battleground states in this upcoming election. With twenty electoral votes, tied for the fifth most of any state in the country, both campaigns will look to focus a great amount of time and money on trying to win this crucial state. And at the center of this fierce battle between the current GOP presumptive nominee and the President of the United States are four counties that comprise the suburbs of Philadelphia. These counties will ultimately decide the fate of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes, and possibly even the election itself.


Author(s):  
Edward B. Foley

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.


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