Quote (inkanddagger @ 9 Jul 2020 21:27)
Correct. Indirectly because they are a minority with greater proportional representation because of the electoral college. Their dirt, shrubs, and cattle have more political representation than human beings living in cities. Taxation without representation is still harming America.
Smaller states are minimally overrepresented in their number of electoral votes, but that's not the reason Trump won. The crux is the first past the post system on a state basis, which gives the candidate whose voters are more evenly distributed across large parts of the country an advantage over the candidate whose support is concentrated in a handful of strongholds.
The states in which Trump had a majority do represent a majority of the US population. He lost the popular vote because he dominated "his" states less thoroughly than Hillary did in "her" states.
A nice reversal of this theme was the 2019 General Election in Canada: liberal party PM Justin Trudeau won a parliamentary majority and reelection while losing the popular vote. Why did that happen? Because the conservative party won its stronghold, the fracking and shale oil province of Alberta, by a gigantic margin. A strong majority of the Canadian electorate in the rest of the country is for an end of fracking and for scaling down fossil fuel use, but the residents of the province that got rich from fracking are overwhelmingly against it. This example goes to show that a split between the popular vote and majorities in parliament or electoral college do not automatically benefit the conservatives or right-wing parties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Canadian_federal_electionThis post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 9 2020 02:05pm