Lefties are “enraged” that Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote, but not the Presidency. Actually she’s won a PLURALITY but NOT a majority of the votes. It looks like she’ll win the “most votes” award by somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 votes — probably closer to a million or more, when the final count is in. According to the latest tally, she leads by 0.9% in the popular vote.
Isn’t it odd that Mrs. Clinton and the Left didn’t raise the issue BEFORE the election? Actually not — they thought they had it in the bag.
That lack of pre-election concern about the Electoral College makes their whining mostly just . . . whining. PETULANT whining at that!
But while Hillary is leading Trump in votes, there’s the “other” votes for President to consider — 6.8+ million votes that constitute 5.3% of the votes cast.
If we had used “ranked voting” (a.k.a. Instant Runoff Voting or IRV), that would have made sure that someone got a MAJORITY of the votes — not just a plurality.
Looking at the votes for the Libertarian and Green candidates (the LP candidate got over double the Green/Socialist candidate’s vote), it’s apparent that under ranked voting, Trump would have won with a majority of the votes, as he would have been a more likely second choice than Hillary.
Moreover, as Trump has astutely pointed out, if the election were awarded for a POPULAR vote total, he would have campaigned differently, with emphasis on populations rather than “battleground states.” And many of us who voted for third party candidates might have voted differently if we felt our votes might make a difference in the outcome our state’s STATE vote.
Notably in California. Trump didn’t campaign in the Golden State (except to raise funds). He spent almost none of his campaign budget in my state. And California holds almost 1/8 of the entire nation’s population. Tiny Nevada got far more campaign attention than behemoth California.
To assume (as do liberal pundits and cry-baby progressives) that Hillary would have won the popular vote by the same margin under their preferred criteria is just silly. It would have been a different race.