Britain's electoral college

Writing on election day in the USA – before the result – I had been thinking about the electoral college, which is, to say the least, a strange arrangement by any standards and possibly unique. Well, not totally unique in view of what I have to say later in this piece. Political historians explain the electoral college in three main ways. One is purely historical and relates to the time, in the 1780s, when the states (there were thirteen of them then) still saw themselves as separate communities and therefore saw the college arrangement as a way of asserting their autonomy. Secondly it has been suggested that the enduring federal culture of the US is reflected in the college, i.e. states of lost much autonomy since 1787, but do still wish to be seen as individual contributors to the process of electing a federal president. Thirdly, it is said that the college system forces the candidates to visit the whole country in search of college votes. In this way they can all feel ‘included’. This third reason is spurious today because, with the increasingly polarised nature of US party politics, most states are ‘safe’ for one or the other candidate. As we are now seeing in the campaign, the candidates need not bother visiting many states (how much time has Obama spent in New York, for example ? – answer virtually none until the hurricane struck). In other words a re-election campaign could not bring the president to NYC but a hurricane could ). So there is a dissonance today between the reasons for the retention of the college and contemporary American politics. In fact, in such a close race, the absurdities of the college system are thrown into focus by the possibility of a ‘wrong-way-round’ result when the winner in the college actually gains less popular votes than the loser. This occurred when Bush ‘defeated’ Gore with a minority of the total vote (not to mention dodgy events in Florida) in 2000. Having said that, the college can be defended on these grounds : With the US almost inevitably producing a very close result in presidential elections – I mean close in terms of the popular vote – the deep schism in the political culture is highlighted. The electoral college, however, can produce a more decisive result that the popular vote, as happened to Obama himself in 2008. In that election Obama only beat McCain in the popular vote by 52.9%-45.7%, hardly a landslide, but won the college vote by 365-173. So we can easily forget the deep divisions in American society and believe instead that Obama was swept into power on a wave of optimism. This also, incidentally, creates impossibly high expectations for an incoming president. Former presidential candidate George McGovern died recently, reminding us of his humiliating defeat by Richard Nixon in 1972. In the college Nixon won every state bar one – Maryland – on a popular vote of 60% against 37%, still a big defeat but nothing like the college result. Over a third of the US voters in 1972 were willing to support McGovern’s ultra-liberal agenda. This fact was disguised by the hugely distorted college result. And again let’s remember Gore’s defeat in 2000 when he actually won on the popular vote. The perversity of the US electoral college possibly, therefore, changed the course of recent history, in view of events in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, before we in Britain become too smug over these truths about the US electoral college, we need to reflect upon the fact that Britain has its own version of the electoral college. It is called the House of Commons. Instead of 50 states we have 650 constituencies. Instead of states with different values in the college (depending on voting population), our members of the electoral college have an equal value of one vote each. No UK government since 1945 has won the popular vote (contrast that with many US presidential candidates who have done so). Furthermore, recent results have been ‘wrong-way-round’ in that more people vote against the incoming government than for it. For example the 1997 election was seen as a ‘landslide’ for Labour. In fact more people voted against Labour, for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, at 47.5%, than voted for Labour at 43.2%. Al Gore may have felt aggrieved (how well he took it !) in 2000, but his injustice was nothing when compared to British elections. So, if we see a perverse result tomorrow, possibly a dead heat, in the USA, we should think on before we are too critical of the Americans. For what it is worth I predict a close popular vote but a comfortable victory for Obama in the electoral college; let’s say he will be about 30 college votes ahead of Romney. We’ll see.