Trump is trailing in the polls, does that mean that Biden will take the White House? How significant is it to lead in the polls?
It’s a well-known fact that President Trump got fewer total votes than Hillary Clinton did in the 2016 US presidential election, and if pollsters are to be believed Joe Biden has a fairly sizeable lead in opinion polls. Given these two pieces of information, a question arises: how much does a lead in opinion polls matter given that the candidate with the most votes doesn't always win? In order to answer I’ll have to explain some of the mechanics of the American democratic system, as well as explaining how several seemingly small and well-intentioned choices makes the American system capable of producing rather undemocratic outcomes.
The first mechanic to discuss is Americas use of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system. In a nutshell, FPTP systems are designed to produce clear winners by having voting districts with one winner which gets all the spoils instead of splitting the gains of winning a district according to vote share. Let’s consider a practical example, if a presidential candidate wins 51% of the votes cast in the state of Wyoming she or (more likely) he gets all three of Wyoming’s electoral college votes; we’ll get back to the electoral college later, suffice it to say here that you need 270 electoral college votes to get to move to Washington DC. The key takeaway here is that no matter how the vote splits in Wyoming one candidate will always get all three votes. FPTP is what makes sure that America only has two serious national political parties at a time. It makes perfect sense for big parties to form as the opposition will have to come together to have a chance of winning. The point of FPTP systems are to produce strong governments which will have large enough mandates to get stuff done, and as a bonus creating governments with strong mandates create the opportunity to reverse the most despised policies enacted by the last administration when the other party regains power. Perhaps amplifying the power of large parties at small parties’ expense is the most significant downside of FPTP though. It’s downright absurd that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders belong to the same party given just how different their ideological outlooks are.
The second important mechanic is the previously mentioned electoral college. The electoral college has many issues, including but not limited to allowing electors in the college to disregard the outcome of the vote in their state, if you're interested in learning more about the electoral college I recommend this video from Legal Eagle. Different states have different amounts of votes in the electoral college based on how many representatives the state has in Congress. Congress has two chambers in order to make sure that the small states wouldn’t always be ran over by the big states which is an admirable idea, however as we’ll see the specific implantation creates some issues. All states have at least three electoral college votes as all states have to senators and at least one representative in the house, though the number of representatives a state gets is a function of its population which means that states like California and Texas are worth more than ten times as many votes as small states in the interior of the country, effectively creating a system where a candidate would only need to win the 10-15 most populous states to win the presidency. That is in itself not an issue at all in my mind, if the 15 most populous states contain a majority of the electorate then winning them should of course go a long way towards getting the top job.
Both the electoral college and the FPTP voting system are fairly good ideas in abstract; a political system that produces strong governments which simultaneously prevents the big states from dominating the small states while still acknowledging that a larger population should have more say sounds great. The problems largely arise in how these two systems interact. America’s system doesn’t reward candidates for winning more than 51% of the votes in a given state as winning say California with 51% of votes and winning California with 80% of votes is a difference in millions of votes and yet it has no effect on the candidate’s prospects of winning the presidency at all.
Going back to our original question, if Biden leads in the opinion polls and the presidency can be won without a majority of votes does a lead in the poll matter? Yes and no – having a lead is of course good but where one’s voters are located could be just as important as how many there are in determining the outcome in the American system. As I said, winning more than 51% of votes in a given states confers literally no benefits, and as different states are worth different amounts of electoral college votes one needs different numbers of votes per electoral college vote in different states. A set number of votes will give you more electoral college votes in Montana compared to in Texas. The geography of participants in opinion polls is vital information if one were to use polls to predict which candidate will win. Trump’s approval rating has hovered in the mid to high thirties his entire term which sounds atrocious, but given that only 55% of voters decided to actually cast a vote in 2016 having the support of some 35% of voters is all he would need if they were better about actually voting than the average American. Seeing as Trump’s approval ratings have been remarkably steady even in turbulent times during his presidency there are reasons to believe that his voters are loyal and more likely to turn out.
The idea that turnout will be the deciding factor in a US presidential election is hardly novel though it seems unmistakably true this time around. Things might look bad for the president, but it ain't over ‘til the fat lady sings.
If you liked this post I'd appreciate it immensely if you shared it with a friend or coworker. I've written plenty about American politics which you can find here if you're interested. Please come back next week for another post about economics or politics!
Written by Karl Johansson
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