David Santamaria Legarda
Wednesday, September 25, 2024, 20:46
Mike McDonnell is a 58-year-old state senator from Nebraska. Last April, the retired firefighter, union leader and Catholic changed his affiliation to the Republican Party after a series of disagreements with Democrats over his conservative stances on social issues such as abortion.
McDonnell’s story could serve as an example of the distance between a working-class voter profile from the American Midwest and the Democratic Party. Left-wing on labour issues but conservative on social issues, he feels alienated by the current ideological approaches of his traditional party and more comfortable with what Donald Trump offers him. A story of interest, no doubt, but one that does not seem like the kind of news that will capture the attention of the American media a few weeks before the White House elections. Why then has the story of this senator occupied a prominent place in the press in recent days? Because, as incredible as it may seem, the identity of the next president of the United States may be in his hands.
The occupant of the White House is not directly elected by the majority of the votes. Nor is he appointed by Parliament. There is a specific body in charge of this task: the Electoral College. It is made up of 538 electors designated by the States every four years. In 2016 Hillary Clinton beat Trump by nearly three million votes, but the Republican won by almost 80 electors and was the final winner.
Distortions
Each state is responsible for appointing a number of electors equal to the sum of senators and representatives it sends to Congress. The delegations to that body are proportional to the population of the state, but with a minimum. No state, however small, has less than three representatives. This creates distortions in the representativeness of the vote that favor those with fewer inhabitants. In California, the most populous, each elector corresponds to more than 700,000 votes. In Wyoming, the opposite case, the figure drops to 200,000.
Each state can choose how to allocate its voters. In 48 of the 50 states, the party with the most support wins all of them. For example, in the 2020 election, Joe Biden beat Trump by less than 0.3 points in Arizona. The result: the incumbent president won 11 electors there and his opponent got none. This system means that most states, where the winner is already decided before the campaign begins, receive no attention from the candidates. No one doubts that all of New York’s voters will go to Kamala Harris this year or Mississippi’s to Trump, and no one will campaign there. Resources are focused on the few places where the winner is not clear.
Back to Nebraska. In this corner of the great American plain, Trump’s lead is currently approaching twenty points. Following the logic of a winner-take-all system, this state should not be in the news in the final sprint of the campaign. However, Nebraska defies this logic by being the only one – along with Maine – in which the winner does not get all the voters. Of the five that are allocated to it, only two go to the candidate with the most votes. The others are allocated according to who has won in each of its three electoral districts for the House of Representatives. Winning in one of them means taking an elector. Number 2 corresponds to Omaha, the main city of the state and where Harris has a serious chance of winning.
2016 Elections
Hillary Clinton beat Trump by nearly three million votes, but the Republican won by almost 80 electors and was the final winner
Can a single elector make the difference? In the context of an election that, according to all polls, is expected to be very close between Trump and Harris, it may be. The scenario would be the following: both candidates win in the constituencies that are assumed to be theirs and, of the states without a clear favorite, the Republican manages to win in those of the so-called Sun Belt (Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina), while the Democrat does so in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the so-called Blue Wall, in reference to the traditional color of this party. In this scenario, the magnate would have 268 electors and his rival, 270. The majority in the Electoral College is 270, so the narrow victory would go to the vice president.
Change of formula
Now imagine that Nebraska changed its electoral system, giving all its electors to the winner of the state. Harris would lose the electors for district number 2, which would go to Trump. In this case, each candidate would have 269 voters. This scenario favors the tycoon because, in the event of a tie, the future president is elected by the delegations in the House of Representatives, and in these the Republican has a majority.
The arithmetic of this assumption is not lost on Republicans. They want Nebraska to modify its electoral system in time so that in the elections this November all its voters will go to the candidate who received the most votes in the State.
This is where McDonnell comes in. Republicans held 32 of the 50 members of the unicameral state legislature – Nebraska is the only state that does not have two chambers. Since the senator’s switch of loyalties, that number has now risen to 33. What is the qualified majority needed to change the electoral system? Precisely 33 votes. All in all, the politician now dissatisfied with the Democrats may hold the future of the distribution of electors in Nebraska in his hands, which in turn could end up deciding who is the next president.
The senator appears to be in an unenviable position. Last week he attended a meeting with state and national Republican politicians where Trump intervened by phone to convey his desire to change the system. Opposing the boss is a dangerous path for a member of this party’s future. On the other hand, once his time in the state Senate is over, McDonnell appears to want to run for mayor of Omaha. And changing the electoral system to the detriment of Democrats would be a bad strategy if you want to lead a city where Harris is likely to win.
Trump accuses McDonnell of having stood in the way of a “great, common-sense Republican victory” with his decision
While awaiting a definitive statement from the senator, Nebraska Democrats asked voters on social media to call and write to him to get him to stand firm. Republicans, for their part, urged their followers to pray and fast for him to change his mind. It seems that the latter has had no effect. On Monday, McDonnell said in a statement that, less than two months before the elections, he did not think this was the time for reform. And, as a point in favor of Omaha continuing to elect an elector, he pointed out the importance for the local economy of the parties being forced to campaign in the city.
In response to McDonnell’s remarks, the chairwoman of the Nebraska Democrats thanked her former party colleague for a decision that protects the ‘blue dot’ on the electoral map of that state. Trump’s response was less complimentary: “Unfortunately, a Democrat turned Republican (?) […] decided, without any reason, to stand in the way of a great republican victory of common sense.
In his press release, McDonnell suggests that a popular vote among Nebraska citizens should decide once and for all what the state’s electoral system should be. It seems like a good way to prevent the current senator and former firefighter from finding himself at the center of a fire of such proportions again.
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