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Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
(www.pewresearch.org)
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Part of this piece has an excellent insight into the dichotomy of the Republican Party. Of those highly engaged with politics, only 27% want to ditch the electoral college! These people understand the party is unpopular and the tactics used to hold power are a necessary way to get their policies.
The rest of the group feels otherwise, probably NOT because they don’t care if their candidate gets elected, but rather that they don’t understand how crucial it is to their party (along with gerrymandering). And their first gut instinct is that popular vote is justified/rational/logical whatever.
Now for a little thought experiment: What would happen if this became an actual campaign issue? I’d put my money on those 27% being able to convince the rest of the party how important it is, flipping their view. Maybe I’m wrong, but since many R voters tent to put self interests above all else, it logically follows that they’re just not understanding how critical the electoral college is. If their talking heads went on air/TV each day and stopped talking about how immigrants are stealing jobs or poor people are taking their hard earned money, and instead focused on the importance of the electoral college, they’d flip. Not because they think it’s right or justified. Because they think it’s best for themselves and their party. And it’s the current rallying cry.
Now apply this across an entire party, with those highly engaged telling the others how to vote, what to think about policy, and what the outcomes will be. Bring together uneducated people already susceptible to misinformation, and pair them with intelligent and extremely vocal/active groups who can sell snake oil like the best of them. Take that minority vote and put some real numbers behind it… likely not enough to get a majority, but enough to win a sophisticated electoral college or gerrymandered district.
The (European) centrist part in me think the “less engaged” Republicans are those who like the central right-wing ideas (small government, less taxes etc.), but don’t like how crazy the current Republican party is, and since they have no real representative they identify themselves as “less engaged”. Those people would probably prefer for the electoral college to be abolished so that the current Republican party never gets elected again and they’re forced to shift to candidates that are actually sane in order to win back votes.
…but yeah, your analysis might be correct too, those “less engaged” people could also be MAGAs that just don’t understand how they wouldn’t win an actually democratic election.
I’m sure you’re right about some people. They’re feeling abandoned and disgusted by what’s supposed to have their support and ideologies in mind, therefore not as active. That makes sense.
I know there are a lot of good/reasonable people who just want the government to play a smaller role in society and I think that’s a necessary part of any well-functioning system. And I agree with the sentiment in specific applications. Hopefully there is a way forward for those types to force a change for the better from the current GOP. Because it’s gone off the rails.