WESTFIELD–It’s safe to say not many people thought Donald Trump would win the presidential election.
However, he did, and with his victory our nation is entering a period of uncertainty. This uncertainty isn’t bad necessarily–it could even be good–but there is still a lot of unknown. People are asking how this all happened, questioning the electoral college and even how politics will go over the next four years.
A lot of questions for Americans, indeed. So, Westfield State University political sciences professor Dr. Davis Smailes tried his best to answer some of these questions, including most importantly–how did this happen?
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a speech to a rally in Oklahoma City, Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
“I think one of the things that was pretty clear was that the enthusiasm was with Trump and Trump supporters,” Smailes said about the outcome. “It was people who were more enthusiastic to vote for Trump and people who were less enthusiastic to vote Clinton.”
Indeed, Trump won the election in spite of polls just before the election that predicted him to lose. And while The Westfield News and Smailes pointed to the volatility of polls, they are still the one barometer that we can use before an election reliably.
After all, I don’t think we should depend too heavily on a Scottish goat with claimed psychic abilities, a Chinese mystic monkey or even which candidates’ cups sold better prior to the election.
By the way, the monkey was the only one right.
In the end, Smailes said that the voters just did not turn out for Hillary Clinton the same way they did for Obama in the two most recent elections.
“Clinton also couldn’t get as many minority voters, as well as the college-educated, as Obama,” Smailes said. “Trump didn’t come close to Romney or McCain’s numbers in the past, but Clinton didn’t come close to Obama’s numbers, either–there just wasn’t the excitement for Clinton as it was for Obama.”
However, some would argue that Clinton actually received the popular vote, so she deserves to win the election. But this doesn’t apply to the presidential election because of the Electoral College.
This has caused people on Twitter and Facebook and pundits on various news sites to decry the system of the Electoral College. Some say it is antiquated, others say it is not a true representation of democracy but Smailes finds it to be fair–or at least as fair as can be.
“One thing that the Electoral College does is make candidates go to places they wouldn’t otherwise go,” Smailes said. “And that was one thing that Trump managed to do–get votes from more rural areas.”
Smailes said that the system gives a voice to more rural states, which would otherwise be left with less despite having a large impact on the country. As an example, Electoral College supporters would have you look at Nebraska. Nebraska produces the sixth most corn in the country, the second most ethanol in the country and the most beef product in the country.
However, if we look at its population of 1.9 million, New York state is over 10 times the size, population-wise. It is certainly fair to say New York has its benefits and produces a lot for the economy, but with Nebraska producing as much agriculture as it does it could be said that the state feeds the country.
Supporters of the system would point to the populations of the two states and say that if an election was based solely on the amount of people, Nebraska would end up being underrepresented. However, in the Electoral College Nebraska gets five votes while New York gets 29. New York still gets more votes of course, but instead of 10 times more–which is the approximate population difference–the state gets just under six times more.
Smailes admitted though, that he can understand the frustration of the system since there are other obvious flaws.
One flaw, which is known as the “faithless elector,” gives a member of the Electoral College the ability to dissent from their region’s choice and cast the vote however they decide to. This isn’t just something that happened in the early parts of the nation, though. As recently as 2004 an anonymous Minnesotan Democrat changed the elector’s choice, voting for John Edwards over John Kerry, who were running mates that year.
Additionally, this is the second time in 16 years that the popular vote has gone to the loser, and both times the Republican candidate has won the election. This certainly could disenfranchise democratic voters, since they could view the system as not honoring the people’s choice.
Still, Smailes feels that these flaws don’t mean the entire system is broken.
“It’s actually kind of unusual to have this happen,” Smailes said about the popular vote oddity. “We have had elections where the Electoral College never comes up for a long time, but now with two elections having issues with it it has become a topic.”
Smailes said that this election though, is not the norm. He said that many of the states had narrow margins of victory, while others where large populations reside had larger margins of victory. This can skew the end result in a way that certainly makes the Electoral College appear unpalatable.
So, maybe the next election could be normal?
