National Popular Vote Interstate Compact Up To 165 EV

[Valmy]

Exactly. You could, naively, believe that this would lead to a great battle for every vote and Republicans campaigning in New York. But I think it would exacerbate existing trends in American politics and lead to even more polarisation.

Both sides believe the other is satan incarnate and Hitler personified.  How could it possibly be more polarized?

[Eddie Teach]

I suspect the percentage of undecided voters across most states is pretty consistent.

[DGuller]

Because elections will be more about getting your own base fired up than appealing to others.

Then the Democrats will always win since their base is a bit bigger and it seems nobody else is ever going to vote.  Ah well that seemed to be where we were going with the EC anyway.

You see to labor under the fallacy that party identity is fixed, and not a function of issues championed by parties.  The equilibrium may move if moving away from EC benefits the people that are currently Democrats, but the paradoxical thing in politics is that success is self-defeating.  You lose votes by accomplishing what you champion.

[Valmy]

You see to labor under the fallacy that party identity is fixed, and not a function of issues championed by parties.

Well outside of a few cultural issues I fail to see significant differences so...yeah.  It all seems pretty tribal these days to me.

[DGuller]

You see to labor under the fallacy that party identity is fixed, and not a function of issues championed by parties.

Well outside of a few cultural issues I fail to see significant differences so...yeah.  It all seems pretty tribal these days to me.

Good God.

[Valmy]

Good God.

Dude you are practically a poster child.  Obama basically does the same things as Bush did but suddenly it does not bother you that much.

[Eddie Teach]

Both parties hate freedom, but there are significant differences in the way they spend money.

[garbon]

Now we just need someone to explain green and purple drazi.

[DGuller]

Good God.

Dude you are practically a poster child.  Obama basically does the same things as Bush did but suddenly it does not bother you that much.

Outside of "counter-terrorism" stuff, Obama has been a notable departure from Bush, for better of worse.  Obamacare, economy, foreign policy, Supreme Court appointments, you name it.  He isn't nearly as radical as the morons make him out to be, but to say that he isn't significantly different from Bush is either crazy or stupid.  You're either a "pox on both houses" nihilist, or you're so far away on the fringe that it does become hard to see the distinguishing features.

[MadImmortalMan]

I still don't see how that follows.

Right now, people have to sometimes take positions that are a turnoff to the crazies back home because they need the votes from more moderate states to win. Without that pressure, going full-on crazy to get as many crazies to the polls as you can would be just as viable a tactic.

[garbon]

[garbon]

I still don't see how that follows.

Right now, people have to sometimes take positions that are a turnoff to the crazies back home because they need the votes from more moderate states to win. Without that pressure, going full-on crazy to get as many crazies to the polls as you can would be just as viable a tactic.

Couldn't you easily say - most people aren't crazies...so running towards the crazies won't get you most of the popular vote?

[MadImmortalMan]

Couldn't you easily say - most people aren't crazies...so running towards the crazies won't get you most of the popular vote?

Yep.

You never know. The EC math does give us a bit of a guarantee of sorts though.

[DGuller]

I still don't see how that follows.

Right now, people have to sometimes take positions that are a turnoff to the crazies back home because they need the votes from more moderate states to win. Without that pressure, going full-on crazy to get as many crazies to the polls as you can would be just as viable a tactic.

States aren't "moderate" or "fringe", nor do they have feelings.  States are heterogeneous aggregations of individuals, and individuals inside of them vary in their levels of extremism.  The battleground states aren't more "moderate", they just happen to get the demographic sums close.  Upstate New York isn't very liberal, it just happens to be in the same state as New York City.

[Sheilbh]

Yes however the electoral college math is totally on their side now.  The last election was a massacre by EC but rather close if we just go by popular vote.

Temporarily. But that happens. I remember in the early 2000s when the GOP were on the verge of a permanent majority with all the Sunbelt states and the South growing at the expense of old Democratic states.

Demographics change, but so does politics and the parties as they try to reflect the shifts in the electorate. The only way the electoral college math stays totally on the Democrats side is if neither they nor the Republicans do anything in response to that.

And all the EC massacre v close popular vote shows is that you've got a two party system. The results are bound to be exaggerated in one way or the other. In 2008 the national vote was roughly the same as in 1988, but then Bush won over 400 electoral votes.

Both sides believe the other is satan incarnate and Hitler personified.  How could it possibly be more polarized?

Most Latin American countries elect their Presidents directly. They're not renowned as models of non-partisan cooperation.

The only country I know that does all elections based on national vote is Israel. Again I think that's a contributing factor in the growing extremism of their politics.