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00:00Dr. Schultz, tell me a little bit about yourself and your research.
00:03Okay, about myself.
00:05So my name is David Schultz, D-A-V-I-D, S-C-H-U-L-T-Z.
00:10I'm a professor of political science at Hampton University.
00:13I concentrate on American politics, and I've written quite a bit about what we call presidential
00:19swing states and American politics.
00:22I'm also a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas, and I teach election law.
00:27So the combination of specializing in American politics and about American election law gives
00:34me kind of a unique perspective, I think, in terms of how to think about American politics.
00:39Awesome.
00:40And for those who might be less familiar, can you briefly describe the Electoral College
00:48and the way it—what is it and how it shapes U.S. presidential elections?
00:53Sure.
00:55The Electoral College was created in the U.S. Constitution back in 1787, and quite simply,
01:01what the Electoral College says is that the people do not directly elect the president
01:06of the United States by a direct popular vote.
01:09Instead, what the Constitution says is that it is up to each state in the United States
01:16to select electors that will then eventually pick the president of the United States.
01:24And each state is given a number of electors roughly proportional to their population.
01:31And in order to become president of the United States, you have to win a majority of the
01:36electoral vote.
01:38So there's a total of 538 electors or electoral votes in the United States.
01:43A majority is 270.
01:45So as I tell people, it doesn't matter who wins the most popular vote.
01:51We've had five circumstances in American history where a candidate has won more popular
01:56vote.
01:57It all comes down to, at least in present politics, to one number, 270.
02:03In 48 out of our 50 states—what I mean by states, places like California or New York
02:11or Texas—in 48 out of those 50 states, the electors are awarded in what's called an
02:18all-or-nothing fashion.
02:20And what we mean by that, whoever wins the most popular vote in that state gets all the
02:26electoral votes.
02:28This is incredibly confusing, even for Americans.
02:32Because when I tell Americans and say, it's not about the popular vote.
02:37It's about the Electoral College.
02:39It's about the fact that you don't have a direct right to vote for president of the
02:43United States.
02:44It's indirect.
02:46Even for Americans, it's very, very confusing.
02:49Every political system in the world is unique.
02:52I would argue that we have one of the more complicated ways of picking the president
02:56or our national leader compared to most countries in the world.
03:00We're not a parliamentary democracy.
03:03We don't have a parliamentary system where it's about whoever gets the majority or can
03:08form a ruling majority in the parliament gets to pick the PM or something like that.
03:14So we're a different type of system.
03:16Awesome.
03:17And how does electing a president through the Electoral College kind of lead to the
03:23creation of swing states?
03:26OK, so what we have is, again, first, we'll do it in sort of several steps here.
03:31Remember to pick the president of the United States.
03:33It's not about direct popular vote.
03:35It's about the Electoral College.
03:38In 48 out of those 50 states, it is a winner-take-all system.
03:42And we know that across the United States, we have significant political polarization.
03:49That is, 95 percent of people who identify as Democrats vote Democrat, 95 percent who
03:55identify as Republican vote Republican.
03:57We're pretty firmly entrenched in our views.
04:01And given that, across the United States, partisanship or party membership is uneven.
04:09There are some states that have way more Democrats or way more Republicans than others.
04:13So for example, a lot more Democrats in California than Republicans, Texas, a lot more Republicans
04:20than Democrats.
04:22What this means is that in roughly about 44 or 45 states, if you had interviewed me two
04:31years ago, I could tell you that California in the presidential election is going to vote
04:38for the Democrat, Texas is going to vote for a Republican, Florida is going to vote Republican,
04:44Massachusetts is going to vote Democrat.
04:46In roughly 44, 45 states, the partisanship is so one-sided in that state that clearly,
04:56because it's winner-take-all, one party is going to win as opposed to another.
05:00If you add all this up, what we would know even two years ago is that a Democratic candidate
05:07for president would have somewhere around 230, 234 electoral votes.
05:15Pretty certain.
05:16A Republican would have about somewhere around 228, 230.
05:22Not enough to get to 270.
05:26What it means is there was about, depending on your count, five, six or seven states that
05:34are not certain Democrat, not certain Republican.
05:37They're about evenly balanced between the numbers of people who identify for one party
05:42versus another.
05:44Those states carry the balance of power in presidential politics.
05:51In order to win the presidency, to get to that 270, you have to win enough of those
05:55swing states to be able to win the presidency.
05:59Awesome.
06:02That's super helpful.
06:03I guess we want to look at treating those states as kind of unique cases.
06:12Certain factors in Michigan versus certain factors in North Carolina or Arizona, if we're
06:16thinking about the seven that I'm conceptualizing in my mind, which if you disagree and you
06:22think that actually maybe it's five, maybe it's an expanded number, would be something
06:26like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.
06:34Those are the ones.
06:35Those are the ones.
06:36I would put at the top of the list, the top three would be Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.
06:43If I really wanted to be a reductionist, I would say it's one state.
06:51It's Pennsylvania.
06:52Okay.
06:53Yeah.
06:54Whatever happens.
06:55Yeah.
06:56I've been playing with the kind of 270 map online.
07:01What if it were to tie?
07:02If you took Nebraska and Maine's electoral college votes that were proportionally distributed
07:09you know, play around with the swing states, you can get to a situation where Republicans
07:15win in Pennsylvania and it's 269 to 269.
07:20That's right.
07:21Yeah.
07:22So yeah, I don't know.
07:23We, you know, that's, you know, yeah.
07:24So coming down to Pennsylvania, but it really does kind of flip.
07:27That makes a huge difference.
07:29Yeah.
07:30Yeah.
07:31I mean, for Harris, for Harris, if she can't win Pennsylvania, her math gets much more complicated
07:38at this point.
07:39I mean, Trump can potentially lose Pennsylvania potentially, but if he sweeps North Carolina,
07:47Georgia, Arizona, possibly, you know, can, can squeak through anyhow and also if he can
07:53pick up Nevada in the process there.
07:55But Pennsylvania really does seem to be the linchpin for the presidential election this
08:00year.
08:01Awesome.
08:02Okay.
08:03Well then this is a great transition because I was going to ask you, you know, looking
08:05at these states, what makes the difference in Pennsylvania to voters there?
08:10Okay.
08:11Well, first off, I want to say a couple other things about what makes a swing state.
08:14So one is about the fact that they're both even, let's say roughly at parity in terms
08:19of Republican and Democrats.
08:21So neither side has an advantage, but there's a couple other things that make a swing state
08:25a swing state.
08:27One of them is the fact that the, and it's, it's about internal characteristics versus
08:32external politics.
08:33Okay.
08:35So the, if we can come up with what we call in political science, the hypothetical median
08:39voter, you know, the voters that's at the dead center, you know, you know, we have some
08:43at the far left, some at the far right.
08:45If we could come up with a hypothetical dead center, the median voter in Pennsylvania and
08:50in all the swing states are to the left of where the Republican party is nationally and
08:57to the right of where the Democratic party is nationally phrased another way.
09:02The median voter, that hypothetical median voter in Pennsylvania is more liberal than
09:08the Republican party nationally and more conservative than the Democratic party nationally.
09:13So now each of the swing states is again, slightly different in terms of that, but all
09:21those seven swing states are, are much more centrist compared to where two parties are
09:28nationally.
09:30And yeah, okay.
09:32So to, I guess, give an audience an idea, do you ever, can you, do you have an example
09:39of a national leader, maybe a Democrat and a Republican who would have kind of, who maybe
09:46kind of represents that kind of political ideology?
09:51Sure.
09:52More centrist, perhaps with the Republicans you might get somebody in the Republican side
10:00like retiring Senator Mitt Romney from Utah, who would probably be much closer in that
10:07direction.
10:08And for the Democrats, more of a centrist probably would be at this point, Governor
10:16Josh Shapiro from, you know, from Pennsylvania, you know, who's, who's exceedingly popular
10:22there as a Senator.
10:25So it would be, or, or perhaps the neighboring state of Ohio, Sherwood Brown, somebody like
10:31that would be, would be closer to where I think the ideological center of Pennsylvania
10:38would be.
10:39Okay.
10:40Yeah.
10:41That's, it's really interesting that you mentioned Romney because I was recently looking at enthusiasm
10:45data among voters and Republican enthusiasm was very high in 2012 when he was running
10:51against Obama.
10:52And so I think that that shows how it decreased in 2016 with Trump because he definitely had
10:58a base within the Republican party that felt alienated by him.
11:03And that's, that number is kind of steadily climbed maybe as part of that base has moved
11:09to the Democrats or moved more independent.
11:13And I guess with Josh Shapiro, if you are thinking about questions that would have made
11:16the difference in Pennsylvania, do you think having him on the ticket is something that
11:21would have moved voters or, I don't know, there's a part of me that also believes that
11:26voters might consider that pandering or, you know, they have to have a lot of trust in
11:32that leader too, for that to be kind of an effective.
11:36Yeah.
11:37Well, one of the conventional wisdoms, which is actually not true generally, is that vice
11:43presidential candidates matter.
11:46The reality is they don't really matter.
11:48Yeah.
11:49I mean, in recent American history, the only vice presidential candidate who really mattered
11:54was in 2008, it was governor Palin.
11:58And Palin actually hurt John McCain.
12:01So in a country where about 40% of the Americans cannot name at any given time who the sitting
12:09vice president is, to think somebody is going to say, gosh, I'm not sure, do I want to vote
12:14for Harris or Trump?
12:15Ah, Shapiro's on the ticket.
12:17I'll go with him.
12:19So conventional wisdom doesn't support that, but it's possible.
12:23I mean, in an election where, and I keep arguing that across those six to seven swing states,
12:31it's going to be about 150,000 to 200,000 voters that are going to really matter.
12:35That's how close the election is.
12:38Even if Shapiro maybe only moved two, three, 4,000 voters, maybe, that might be enough.
12:44That might be enough in that state.
12:46So we're looking at what I'm calling this year kind of the logic of small numbers in
12:51terms of how it would shift.
12:53But certainly what has become interesting here is that these seven states are much more
13:01centrist, centrist in different ways, of course, from one another.
13:04And you would think that both Harris and Trump would be pitching to the center.
13:10But these centrist candidates, or rather these undecided voters, I should say, are hard to
13:17reach, very hard to find, very hard to reach.
13:20And both campaigns have, I think, have mostly said, we're going to pitch to our bases.
13:25And so what it sets up now is the situation where that for a lot of the few undecided
13:30voters there are, let's say, in Pennsylvania, and if the accounts that I'm reading are accurate,
13:36these undecided voters are saying, I don't particularly like what Trump or Harris are
13:42saying.
13:43So to me, that question is, are they going to vote for one or the other?
13:47Are they going to show up to vote?
13:49And that's really the issue right now.
13:52So the candidates are basically saying, let's mobilize our bases.
13:55Let's go for the ones that we know are our supporters and just hope we out-mobilize the
13:59other side.
14:00Yeah.
14:01Well, and that, I think, is a great transition maybe to talk about Michigan briefly, where
14:07there are concerns, I think definitely within the Harris camp, about abstention, about third
14:14parties.
14:15And I think maybe the question for you is, I guess I look at that, the crisis in Gaza,
14:28the ongoing conflict, that's a dynamic, if you look at static and dynamic factors that
14:34are influencing a campaign, you know, four years ago, this was not necessarily, you know,
14:39that wasn't a focus of the campaign in Michigan.
14:42It might be an issue that people talked about on the campaign trail, but wasn't, you know,
14:46center, center, center focus.
14:49Does that, I guess in swing state politics, is that a real concern that these issues can
14:56just pop up and there's huge portions of the electorate that are moved and touched and
15:01motivated by those factors moving forward?
15:03This is good.
15:04So let's do a contrast here, is that Michigan has the highest density per capita of Arab
15:10Americans in the United States.
15:13During the primary season, about 20% of the voters in the Democratic primary opted not
15:20to vote for Joe Biden, basically, you know, you know, what was the phrase here, none of
15:26the above or something like that, or basically not committed like that.
15:30Harris has to worry about where those voters are because she needs them.
15:34She needs them to show up.
15:36These voters are not going to vote for Trump.
15:38We know that.
15:39The question is, if they don't vote for her, that's effectively a vote for Donald Trump.
15:44So she needs to worry about them.
15:45And you're right.
15:46This is an issue that, that a year ago, roughly a year ago, wasn't even on the horizon.
15:51I'm assuming in the next few days, no other major, you know, transformation or another
15:57October surprise is going to happen.
15:59But this year I've been talking all about, all about all these surprises.
16:03I mean, the fact that we're looking at a president who wins the primaries, who drops
16:10out, has a bad date, bad debate performance to assassination attempts, et cetera, et cetera.
16:16We've had a lot of strange things happen this presidential cycle.
16:19But having said that, what's really also fascinating, go back two years ago, right after our midterm
16:25elections, look at national polls and swing state polls, Biden and Trump were roughly
16:31on parity.
16:32We knew the seven swing states, they were close.
16:35Everything that has happened, now that the dust has settled again, Harris and Trump are
16:41what at parity nationally and in the seven swing states.
16:45That speaks to the polarization, how, how fixed we are and about how little it's going
16:52to take to move things.
16:54I can, just to do a contrast here, we were talking about Michigan with the high percentage
16:59of Arab Americans.
17:01The state of Pennsylvania has over 100,000 individuals of Ukrainian descent.
17:09And one has to wonder, might this become a factor at the last minute where people are
17:15concerned about whether or not Trump versus Harris are going to continue to support Ukraine
17:20and how might they cast a vote?
17:22And so this, I mean, 100,000 people is not a small group of people, of course, you know,
17:29a subgroup like this, what their decision to do could affect the state of Pennsylvania
17:35in ways that's different than the Arab American population in Michigan, that is a factor there.
17:42Definitely.
17:43And I think we saw that in the Trump Harris debate when she kind of spoke directly to
17:50the camera, to the 800,000 Polish Americans, you know, who, who also share, you know, definitely
17:56sympathies with the Ukrainians and as, you know, being Russia's neighbor, how geopolitics
18:01even, even impacts them.
18:03I guess going back, I want to touch on Wisconsin briefly in 2016.
18:10So I think these, I'm, I appreciate kind of the, the kind of real policy questions, especially
18:16surrounding foreign policy and the way that that's impacting the 20, the 2024 election.
18:21If we go back to 2016, kind of when maybe the Trump phenomenon took a lot more people
18:27by surprise, one of the criticisms of Hillary Clinton's campaign was that she didn't go
18:35to Wisconsin enough, that she wasn't there, she didn't have a presence.
18:39So I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to that, that swing state voters, because
18:43of the electoral college, they might have an understanding that their vote matters a
18:47little bit more than, than say somebody in Tennessee or, or California and that, yeah,
18:53just feeling that the campaign is putting an emphasis on their vote on their state and
18:58how that influences maybe the campaigns, how that interaction helps, you know, voters kind
19:04of determine who they're going to cast their ballots for.
19:07Yeah.
19:08Let's go back to 2016 for a minute and tell a story of four states.
19:11I live in the state of Minnesota.
19:14We didn't have a primary at that point.
19:15We had a caucus.
19:17We have a different system here.
19:18Bernie Sanders beats Clinton by two to one in the caucus.
19:23Bernie Sanders beats Clinton in Wisconsin and in Michigan, also in the primaries.
19:30What does Clinton do?
19:32She violates the most cardinal rule of politics, which is she took voters for granted.
19:37She didn't go back and have a presence in Michigan or in Wisconsin.
19:41I think she might've done some fundraising in Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, but no
19:46serious campaigning.
19:48And in my state, Minnesota, she did not come back and campaign.
19:52She lost three of those four states.
19:55They basically took votes for granted.
19:57What and that's, and I think that's in part why Trump won is that he, he didn't take votes
20:04for granted and Clinton did.
20:06Well, four years ago, Biden understood that rule and made sure he had the presence across
20:12the blue wall and showed up.
20:15This time, both of the candidates are spending an incredible amount of time in those states,
20:21making sure that they're not ignoring it.
20:25And that, and again, we're going to of course see how that pays off in terms of political
20:30mobilization and everything come election day.
20:33But the swing states get just an incredible amount of attention because they are the states
20:39that matter the most.
20:41A friend of mine years ago ran some numbers, which I thought was kind of interesting also
20:46too, and found that the swing states received a higher percentage of money in federal aid
20:54than did the non-swing states also, which shouldn't surprise us because these are the
21:01states that put that, that, that president over the top.
21:05And so what are they going to do?
21:06They're going to reward those states that were important to them.
21:09So the voters get more attention.
21:11The states get more money.
21:13If I want to be a little, I don't know, cynical, the, the major for profit broadcast networks
21:21in those states love it because they get an incredible amount of revenue streams from
21:26political commercials, but they certainly get way more attention.
21:32And policy is in many ways directed more to try to win those states over than perhaps
21:39the other states.
21:40Yeah.
21:41Yeah.
21:42Yeah.
21:43Definitely.
21:44I mean, the, the federal aid question I think is something that's always kind of toying
21:47in the back of my head where if you are relying so heavily on these voters and you don't deliver
21:55for them and you're, you know, seeking reelection, that that's gonna have some consequences possibly
22:00down the line.
22:01Yes.
22:02I guess, just to quickly touch on some of the Sunbelt states.
22:08When I look at states, those blue wall states, you know, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
22:16I went to college in Ohio.
22:17There's something kind of about maybe de-industrialization.
22:21There's something about people in, people searching for a new future, you know, in this
22:27more globalized world.
22:29Right.
22:31I think there's remnants of that or pieces of that perhaps in some of these other states,
22:37but I'm wondering if you can maybe speak to the electorate of an Arizona or in Nevada.
22:43What, what exactly is going on there?
22:44What are you looking at when it comes to those voters?
22:46Okay.
22:48Great contrast, by the way, the, the blue wall states are de-industrializing and also
22:53losing population.
22:55They're population exodus.
22:57The Sunbelt states, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona are high growth states.
23:02What we're getting is across them is several interesting things.
23:06For all three of them, the percentage of the population, you know, sorry, for all three
23:11of them, the percentage of the populations that are college educated is growing.
23:16The percentage of persons of color is growing.
23:19Their economies are growing.
23:21They're attracting new people in and that's changing the demographics of those states
23:26in significant ways.
23:28If you look at a state like Georgia, it stands out for having what among the Southern states,
23:33the highest percentage of people who are African American and African Americans are far more
23:38likely to vote Democrat than they are Republican.
23:41We're looking at like the Atlanta area, Athens, Georgia area where the university of Georgia
23:47is, is highly educated and we're seeing increasingly Democrats are attracting highly educated,
23:53you know, college educated people.
23:54Arizona, you've got Arizona State, you've got the University of Arizona, high growth
23:58areas attracting people.
24:00Arizona has a fairly high percentage Hispanic.
24:04We have Nevada, also high growth, high percentage Hispanic, maybe not quite as dominated by
24:13colleges, you know, but University of Nevada, Las Vegas is attracting people.
24:18So we've got clear, different demographics and I would even throw in, by the way, let's
24:25one that you didn't mention is North Carolina.
24:28You know, North Carolina is also high growth, very high percentage college educated as you
24:35have in the Research Triangle area, you know, which is the Raleigh-Durham area.
24:40You've got NC State, you've got University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
24:44You've got Duke University.
24:47We're attracting a lot of high tech there.
24:49So these are states, let's say the still Southern states have very, very different demographics
24:57than do the blue wall states.
25:00Yes, definitely.
25:01That's, yeah, the higher education element is something that a friend of mine from North
25:06Carolina had pointed out as one of the factors.
25:09And I think that that is really interesting.
25:13I guess with changing demographics, generally from state to state, do you see more states
25:21kind of turning purple in the coming decade?
25:23Do you see, or maybe some of these places where some of these swing states may be stabilizing
25:30a little bit more or?
25:33Well, clearly swing states don't stay swing forever.
25:36For example, the state of Missouri was the perfect swing state for 100 years.
25:43I mean, the entire 20th century, how Missouri want, so want the country.
25:49But demographics do shift states.
25:51Now, the first thing I also want to say is demographics are not destiny.
25:54I mean, one of the mistakes that Democrats made for years is thinking, well, the growing
26:01economic shift in America means inevitably it's going to be all for Democrats.
26:05Well, no, you still have to have a good campaign, a good candidate, a good strategy, et cetera,
26:09et cetera.
26:10Okay.
26:11But if we look at it, I mean, first thing to think about here is the gradual or significant
26:15depopulation of rural states across the United States.
26:21That's just across the board, no matter what, it's going to happen.
26:23I mean, states like the North and South Dakotas, places like that, they're just depopulating
26:30right off the bat.
26:31And even within states, the exodus from the rural areas to the urban area.
26:37So all of them are undergoing shifts over the next few years.
26:41But if I were to look at, again, a state like Pennsylvania, up until Trump won it a few
26:48years ago, it had voted reliably Democrat for many, many years.
26:54And finally, it shifts because of all the shifting populations, the deindustrialization
26:59and so forth.
27:00If I'm looking down the line for states that I would pick as potential swing states in
27:05the future, my three would be Texas, South Carolina, and Montana.
27:12The Democrats keep thinking Texas is flippable now.
27:16I taught in Texas for years.
27:18I was in San Antonio, Texas for many years, so I know the state reasonably well.
27:22I've always said that Texas is probably not seriously in play, at least until 2028, maybe
27:29even a little bit later.
27:31But the demographics are clearly shifting there.
27:34South Carolina, it's attracting a lot of people moving down to South Carolina, partly because
27:40of the schools, partly because of the weather and so forth.
27:43And Montana, which has been traditionally a very Republican state, except for Jon Tester,
27:48has become kind of a mecca for the skiing population, for young people.
27:55So those would be three states that I would kind of pick.
27:58And also, I was going to say Montana.
27:59Since you lived in California, you know this.
28:02Montana is benefiting from people leaving California's high cost of housing.
28:08I can move to Montana.
28:09I can get a pretty decent house or condo or something for about probably like a third
28:14of the price or something like that.
28:17Yeah, definitely.
28:18Um, let's see here.
28:21Sorry, your image froze briefly.
28:23But yeah, no, I think, yeah, Montana, I think, and North Carolina are interesting states.
28:31And Ohio, too, with Sherrod Brown, kind of who you mentioned earlier.
28:34Because I think one of the factors that is kind of being discussed and is interesting
28:41is split ticket voters, people who might vote for Tester, but will vote for Trump.
28:48People who want to vote for Josh Stein, but also will vote for Donald Trump.
28:52You know, these these people who maybe in that back to your point about kind of maybe
28:58in these states, people being more centrist is that they can see policies from different
29:03candidates that are attractive to them.
29:05And yeah, yeah, yeah.
29:06I suspect, although I can't prove it, it'd be great to do the data.
29:10I suspect in those swing states, you probably have a higher percentage of split ticket voting
29:16than you do in other states.
29:18Yeah, yeah.
29:19So I mean, that that would be my hypothesis.
29:21Thus, it wouldn't surprise me that, right, we're going to get Trump who's going to win
29:26Montana by a healthy margin.
29:29Possibly Tester squeaks by, although the polls are not suggesting it.
29:33Yeah, it could happen.
29:34It could happen.
29:35No.
29:36All righty.
29:37Well, I want to transition back a little bit to the Electoral College.
29:41And you've written a bit about I guess we can call them reforms that have that some
29:49states have made.
29:50So we talked about Maine and Nebraska who distribute their votes based on the proportion
29:55of the vote.
29:57Can you describe maybe the differences between that proportional distribution and the winner
30:01takes all method that's in most of the states that most states use?
30:06Yeah.
30:06So in 40 out of 50 states, it is called winner take all.
30:09Whoever wins the most popular vote.
30:12I didn't say the majority, but the most popular vote wins all the electors in that state.
30:19Winner take all system.
30:20What Maine and Nebraska do is they allocate the electoral vote somewhat proportionally.
30:28What I mean by proportionally, they do it by congressional district.
30:32But then also whoever wins the most popular vote kind of gets like a bonus in terms of
30:38an elector.
30:40So it's kind of an odd system there.
30:43But those two states, if I were to say it's more proportional, it's possible to still
30:49win like an elector in Nebraska, even though it's a state that's overwhelmingly Republican.
30:56The Omaha area is a congressional seat and likely that Omaha will vote for Joe Biden
31:06and likely will vote for Harris.
31:08And so that's proportional.
31:10Now, if we think about the Electoral College.
31:15About 60 to 65 percent of the American public says, let's get rid of it.
31:19It's not fair.
31:20We don't like that idea.
31:22It's efforts to remove the Electoral College have been the most popular form of constitutional
31:28amendment or the most frequent source of constitutional amendment in American history.
31:33But to get rid of the Electoral College, we have to amend the Constitution to amend
31:38the Constitution.
31:39It would take two thirds of both houses of Congress and three quarters of the states
31:43to agree to do that because of our polarization.
31:47That's unlikely to happen because even though about 65 percent of the American public wants
31:52to get rid of it, 70 to 75 percent of Democrats do 60 to 65 percent of independents do.
31:58The Republicans like it.
32:00Republicans like it because it's working to their advantage.
32:03So it's unlikely it's going anywhere in the near future.
32:06What I've argued for is sort of a second best option.
32:10And it's to say we should basically have the Maine and Nebraska model across the entire
32:16country because that that model of proportionality is not dictated by the Constitution.
32:22It's dictated by state law.
32:24And it would be a lot more fair because think about it right now.
32:28What state in the United States has the most Republican voters?
32:32California.
32:34But because there's so many Democrats, Republicans have essentially not had a say in presidential
32:40politics in years.
32:42Or there's a lot of Democrats in Texas, but they don't have any say.
32:47So the Electoral College essentially or effectively, I'd say effectively disenfranchises minority
32:54parties and minority voters across the United States.
32:58And so a proportional system might get us something that's a little bit fair than what
33:03we currently have.
33:05And do you see that?
33:07I think reading your article, I found that the argument is really compelling, but that
33:13almost that political polarization, even though it's a less extreme solution than abandoning
33:21the Electoral College altogether, you still kind of run up against partisan politics.
33:28I put myself in the shoes of a Republican member of the legislature in Texas or a Democrat
33:35in California.
33:36What incentive do I have to give those Republicans or those Democrats a voice or a greater voice?
33:43And that really, there would need to be a need, I think, in this argument to put party
33:49or put country before party and the will of the voter above my political consideration
33:56or my party's political considerations, perhaps.
33:58No, you're absolutely correct.
33:59There is no political incentive to do it.
34:01I mean, it would be country above party.
34:04There would have to be demand among the voters in the state to want to change it, but it's
34:08not likely.
34:09The only scenario that I see in the near future that might change the calculus, if a Democrat
34:17were to win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote.
34:22If a Democrat were to win the Electoral College but lose, so yes, so when you talk about Texas
34:29possibly being in play in the next decade, there could be momentum from Republicans who
34:35maybe say, okay, maybe it is time to give this up.
34:38Right, right.
34:39And so let's imagine a scenario that Harris wins 270 but loses the popular vote.
34:47I could see suddenly a lot of Republicans now saying, hey, this system that was working
34:53for us for so many years is not working for us anymore.
34:56And your Texas example, I think, is absolutely perfect because I'm going to guess that within
35:01a decade that there's a good possibility it's going to flip Democrats.
35:08And at that point, now we're going to have arguably, you know, the second largest state
35:14in the United States, along with California, the largest are going to be certain Democratic
35:19states at that point, unless something happens with California.
35:22The Republicans are going to be at such a disadvantage.
35:24I can see them wanting to change it.
35:26A few years ago, when Pennsylvania was consistently Democrat, there was movement in the Republican
35:33state legislature in Pennsylvania to go to proportionality.
35:38Sensing that exact same thing.
35:39So that's what I think it's going to take.
35:41It's going to take some kind of shifts like that before I think there's a real serious
35:47movement, either at the national constitutional amendment process or within states to make
35:52a shift.
35:53Before kind of, you know, the what are you going to be watching for an election night?
35:57We do have a lot of questions from our Spanish colleagues on why it takes so long to tabulate
36:03the vote in the United States compared to so many other countries.
36:06I don't know if you have any insights onto that.
36:08Sure, sure.
36:09Partly, first off, all 50 states govern their own rules regarding how to how to cast ballots
36:15and how to count the ballots.
36:18There are some states that allow early voting, that is voting that takes place before Election
36:23Day.
36:24But states like Pennsylvania don't start counting those early ballots that are done
36:29by mail, for example, until after Election Day.
36:33So, so if we think of it in terms of different states, different rules for how they count
36:39and when they count the ballots, that accounts for a lot of why we might see some of those
36:44delays.
36:45Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
36:47We think, I don't know, here there are so many theories.
36:50Well, it's just a smaller population.
36:52It's this, it's that.
36:53But yeah, those those differing roles, definitely.
36:55And also, this, I just don't want to miss anything.
37:02When we look at factors that influence voter turnout, you know, the race is so close.
37:10That's what the polling shows.
37:13Higher turnout elections tend to favor certain parties over others.
37:17Do you have any, you know, looking at the race, do you have any expectations about where
37:21turnout will be, maybe relative to 2020 or 2016?
37:25Well, right now, the early voting is really heavy in the United States.
37:30Does that suggest high turnout?
37:32Maybe, or it might just suggest that more people are moving to early voting as opposed
37:38to later.
37:38But I do think that the, the, the changes in voting rules, which that happened as a result
37:45of the pandemic, which have generally made it easier to vote earlier, and along with
37:51the intensity of the, of the election in terms of both sides seem to be very motivated.
37:57It's, I don't know if it's going to be as heavy as it was four years ago, but it's
38:02certainly going to be above, let us say, recent averages in American history.
38:08Perfect.
38:08Okay, thank you.
38:09And then the final question that I have for you is, what are you going to be watching
38:15for on election night?
38:17Okay, if I'm looking for any single thing, if, at the, remember, this is U.S. time, by
38:26the way, let's say by the end of election day, very late, if Harris is in the lead in
38:34Pennsylvania, won the election.
38:37Yeah, okay.
38:38Yeah, that's my, that's my biggest sign at this point, because almost all that early
38:44voting is probably going to be coming heavily from Pennsylvania, from Philadelphia, which
38:49is going to go probably 80% for Harris.
38:51So if she's in the lead in Pennsylvania or very, very close at the end of, at the end
38:57of November 5th, she's probably won the election.
39:00The other thing I'd be looking for, if there's heavy turnout by people under the age of 30
39:05or by women in general, that's also a sign for Harris.
39:11Flip side, if young people and women aren't turning out heavily to vote, it's probably
39:18a good night for Donald Trump, and he's more likely to win.