February 25, 2004

The Real Battle

By Richard Baehr
The first state—by—state polls of George Bush versus the all but certain Democratic nominee John Kerry are now appearing.  These polls matter much more than national polls. It is the Electoral College, as many Americans learned for the first time in 2000, that determines the winner of the Presidential election, not the national popular vote.  In 2000, for the 4th time in our history, the winner in the Electoral College finished second in the popular vote.   But frequently, the winner of both the popular vote and Electoral College does not win a majority of the popular vote. Bill Clinton never reached 50% of the popular vote in either of his victories.  Neither did John F. Kennedy in 1960, nor Richard Nixon in 1968, nor Ronald Reagan in 1980. Jimmy Carter barely hit 50% in 1976, as did Harry Truman in 1948. Frequently, the presence of a third party candidate denies the winner a popular vote majority, and sometimes the third party candidate may even...(Read Full Article)