As the presidential race inches agonizingly toward a conclusion, it might be easy to miss the fact that the results are not actually very close.
With many ballots still outstanding in heavily Democratic cities, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., with nearly 74 million votes, was leading President Trump by more than 4.1 million votes nationwide on Friday afternoon. His lead is expected to expand, perhaps substantially, as officials finish counting.
This means more Americans have voted for a Democrat for president than for a Republican in each of the past four elections, and seven of the past eight, the exception being 2004, when President George W. Bush beat John Kerry by about three million votes. But, depending on the outcome this year, only four or five times in those eight elections have Democrats gone on to occupy the White House.
It looks likely that Mr. Biden will secure an Electoral College win. But the days of nail-biting over close races in individual states, in contrast to the decisive preference of the American public, have crystallized some Americans’ anger at a system in which a minority of people often claim a majority of power.
“We look at a map of so-called red and blue states and treat that map as land and not people,” said Carol Anderson, a professor of African-American studies at Emory University who researches voter suppression. “Why, when somebody has won millions more votes than their opponent, are we still deliberating over 10,000 votes here, 5,000 votes there?”
Mr. Biden’s current popular vote lead is larger than the individual populations of more than 20 states. It is also more than a million votes larger than Hillary Clinton’s already large popular vote advantage four years ago. Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Trump in the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes, or 2.1 percentage points; Mr. Biden is currently ahead by 2.8 points.
The outcome could give new fuel, at least temporarily, to long-shot efforts to eliminate or circumvent the Electoral College.
John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote Inc., which lobbies states to pledge their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, said his group would intensify efforts next year in Arizona, Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, among others.
There are similar structural issues in the Senate, where the current Democratic minority was elected with more votes than the Republican majority and where by 2040, based on population projections, about 70 percent of Americans will be represented by 30 percent of senators.
“It’s not that the states that are represented by the 30 percent are all red, but what we do know is that the states that are going to have 70 senators are in no way representative of the diversity in the country,” said Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
“The more this happens, the more you get the sense that voters don’t have a say in the choice of their leaders,” he said. “And you cannot have a democracy over a period of time that survives if a majority of people believe that their franchise is meaningless.”
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November 06, 2020 at 04:59PM
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The Electoral College race is down to the wire. The popular vote isn’t: Biden leads by 4 million. - The New York Times
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