2016-11-17 08:00:00
Protests following the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States continue across the country, notably highlighting the fact that Hillary Clinton won more votes than the Republican candidate. The particularities of the American electoral system allow a candidate who has received fewer direct votes to be elected, if he wins the majority of the votes of the electors. This was the case this year, as already in 2000.
Read also Electoral elections in the United States, how does it work?
Is the American system therefore unfair? Not that easy. Explanations.
Does the voice of a citizen have the same value everywhere?
Each state has as many votes in the electoral college as it has representatives in Congress. This weight in the Senate and the House of Representatives being proportional to its population, the same goes for the votes in the electoral college.
However, there are variations. Across states, the number of electors per million people can vary between one and five. Eleven states benefit from more than three voters per million heads. However, these states are the 11 least populated in the country and represent only 2.5% of the population. Only 7.4% of the population is found in states with 2 or 3 voters per million individuals. The vast majority of Americans, the remaining 90.1%, therefore have practically the same representation.
What are the consequences for the investment of candidates in the different States?
Intuitively, one might think that it is more interesting for candidates to convince citizens whose votes weigh two or even three times more than the average. In reality, the “winner-take-all” system, that is to say the attribution of all the votes of a State to the winner in the latter, makes the raw number of electors more important than the number of votes per head. The voices that carry weight are therefore those of the large States. In particular, those of large states in balance, where each additional vote greatly increases the chances of winning many voters, and therefore the election.
The number of Democratic or Republican conventions and meetings in each state is a good indication of the importance given to them by the parties.
As we can see on the map, the candidates are primarily involved in the states in balance, and among these states the electoral investment decreases with the number of electors. Florida, a “Swing State” with 29 electors, was alone the scene of 71 public meetings out of a total of 400, or 18%. Conversely, California and Texas, traditionally won by Democrats and Republicans respectively, were the scene of only one meeting each despite their significant weight in the electoral college.
Focusing on these key and balancing States seems to be paying off. Of the 12 states where more than 10 meetings took place, 6 switched from the Democratic camp to the Republican camp between 2012 and 2016. With their total of 89 electors, they were enough to determine the winner.
Is it very different from a direct election?
In the end, more than the size of a State, the issue focuses on its strategic importance. Which puts into perspective the criticism saying that things would be different in a direct system, as in France:
In our country, candidates will focus on the socio-demographic categories which are not necessarily the most numerous but which, above all, they have the greatest chance of rallying to their cause.
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In the United States, the structure of the system means that these categories are replaced by the States, but the principle remains the same. This is all the more true since States sometimes coincide with specific majority sociological profiles. For example, urban dwellers overwhelmingly voted for Clinton, which partly explains why she got votes from highly urbanized states.
Read also Urban-rural, white-minority, young-old: the fault lines of the American vote
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