Democratic nomination rules debate shows value of National Popular Vote plan

Rob Richie
FairVote
12 May 2008

Former president Bill Clinton’s one-time chief of staff Leon Panetta is among those suggesting that Democrats would be better served by going to winner-take-all primaries where the candidate who wins a state takes all of that state’s delegates no matter how close the contest. As Bill Clinton himself has pointed out, Hillary Clinton would be far ahead with this rule, given her victories in states like Texas, California and New York.

Setting aside the debate over allocating delegates by proportional representation versus winner-take-all for the primaries (a debate where I think proportional representation wins hands down, as previously argued) and other issues like the impact of the Democrats’ schedule of primaries, consider the lessons for how winner-take-all would have played out in the Democratic primary for how best to elect the president in general elections.

In general elections, we currently have winner-take-all, state by state rules (Maine and Nebraska allocate delegates by winner-take-all in congressional district, but have never divided their electoral votes since adopting their approach and are highly unlikely to do so this year either). As we can learn from appplying this rule to the Democratic nomination contests, winner-take-all rules means that:

* The winner in the national popular vote is more likely to be defeated: HIllary Clinton wouldn’t need delegates out of Michigan and Florida to win if winner-take-all had been used even though she’s behind in the national popular vote and behind by more than 2% in the national vote without Michigan and Florida.

* Big states count more than small states: Barack Obama has won nearly twice as many states as Clinton, but she has won more of the big state. That helps explain why contrary to what some misinformed people contend, the current Electoral College system doesn’t help small states. It in fact makes the swing voter in big popular states far more important than anyone else.

* Close states count far more other states: The current Democratic system is essentially a national primary contest unfolding state by state. Getting more votes in every state matters, no matter how close, even if the media likes to obsess over who wins states as if the results were winner-take-all. In contrast, if winner-take-all rules were in place, the candidates would completely ignore states they couldn’t win or were sure to win. That’s sadly just what they will do in general elections this fall, as revealed over the weekend in the New York Times. Our Presidential Election Inequality report presents powerful data from 2004 about 99% of campaign resources going to 16 states in the campaign’s peak season.

* Recounts are a far bigger problem: When Hillary Clinton won Indiana by fewer than 20,000 votes, some in the media started hyperventllating about a recount. That was absurd. If Obama had won Indiana in a recount, he would have gotten only one more delegate. But winner-take-all makes artificial crises out of close results in states like Florida in 2000. The odds of a national recount being impactful with a national popular vote plan are minuscule, as demonstrated in our 2007 report on recounts.

Some might wonder why I don’t support proportional allocation of electors in the Electoral College as the Democrats use in their nomination contests. That approach would be better than winner-take-all if applied to all states, but it’s not nearly as sensible as every vote being equal in general elections. See chapter four of Every Vote Equal, the book I co-authored about the National Popular Vote plan, and our 2007 report Fuzzy Math.

Fortunately, we should have the National Popular Vote plan in place for general elections in November 2012 to correct all these defects in the current Electoral College system — the plan has passed in four states and will be debated in all other states in the coming year.

How soon some Democrats forget: Al Gore was not helped by easy nomination in 2000

By Rob Richie
FairVote.org
May 10th, 2008

The conventional wisdom crowd is having a field day with misguided arguments in favor of avoiding competitive contests in presidential primaries — take former MccCain advisor Dan Schnur’s somewhat wistful analysis for the New York Times that if Democrats had had the same popular vote results in each state and used winner-take-all rules, Hillary Clinton would have a lock on the nomination despite having fewer popular votes overall. You now have Leon Panetta, former chief of staff for Bill Clinton, opining that winner-take-all is the way to go.

I’ve argued in this blog that Democrats in fact are getting a leg up over Republicans with their process — mobilizing far more voters that will help them in the fall in down-ballot races, getting far more press attention that has contributed to a widening advantage over Republicans in voter self-identification and getting more “battle-tested”, with plenty of time to heal wounds as long as the contest ends soon after the Montana primary on June 3rd.

Of course for many Democrats, they just want to make sure the process doesn’t lead to a loss in November. But they seem to be forgetting history:

* John Kerry in 2004 had an easy nomination process after his upset win in Iowa and follow-up win in New Hampshire. Then he lost a race a lot of Democrats thought they could have won.

* Al Gore in 2000 had a far easier nomination process than George Bush. After winning Iowa and New Hampshire and the onset of Bill Bradley’s heart condition, he strolled to the nomination while Bush faced a vigorous challenge from John McCain. By May, Bush was 8% ahead in a New York Times poll and went onto win a race many Democrats thought was theres. Of course the election was highly controversial, but few would argue Gore somehow was boosted by having such an easy ride to the nomination.

* Bob Dole in 1996 overcame a stumble in New Hampshire to close out the nomination relatively early under Republican winner-take-all rules. He never came close to defeating Bill Clinton’s re-election effort.

* In 1992, George Bush quickly fended off Pat Buchanan’s insurgent campaign while Bill Clinton had to fight it out for months. But Clinton won by 6% in November.

And so on. Each election has its own reasons for why the general election goes the way it does, with the most important being the public attitude toward the party occupying the White House. Having a more democratic process for choosing nominees seems to be no barrier to winning in November.

Sore Dems Want Out of Proportion Primaries

By Donald Lambro
Townhall.com
9 May 2008

Under the Democrats' proportional system, delegates are awarded among the candidates in direct proportion to the vote each receives in the congressional districts, with some portion based on their share of the statewide vote. In the winner-take-all system used by the Republican Party, the candidate who takes a state primary, even by a single vote, wins all its delegates. But liberal Democrats are repulsed by what they consider to be an undemocratic, survival-of-the-fittest system that quickly eliminates the weaker candidates.

Throughout the year's primary battles, I always made it a habit of asking Clinton supporters whether they believed it would have been far better for their party if it had switched to winner-take-all. The answer was usually the same: no. The proportional system was "fairer," it rewarded front-runners and second-tier candidates, giving them a chance to build support as they became better known to their party, they told me.

Now, I find more and more Democrats -- especially Hillary's supporters -- regretting the present system, which produced an interminable nominating process that has proved to be costly, divisive and politically exhausting. The Democrats come off as the party who can't get its act together, struggling to produce a nominee, while Republicans have picked their strongest candidate early and are confidently gearing up for their convention and the general election to come.

FULL STORY