Friday, November 11, 2016

Trump is the Least-Legitimate President-Elect in American History

Actually, it's quite striking. Trump is the least-legitimate President-Elect in American history:


It now looks like Trump will win the electoral college 306 to 232. That's not final but that's pretty sure to be the result. But he will likely lose the popular vote by as much as 1 to 2 percentage points - perhaps two or three times the size of Gore's margin. (At the moment it's only about 200,000+ votes. But it will certainly grow as lots of additional votes on the West Coast get counted.)

By contrast, George W. Bush won the electoral college 271 to 266 and lost the popular vote by about half a million votes. In other words, they diverged but Bush only barely squeaked out a electoral vote victory.

Trump's electoral vote lead isn't quite a blow out but it's a big margin - 74 electoral votes.

Obviously this doesn't matter for the result. But I think it's worrisome for the country as a general matter. It's bad for everyone when these two counts diverge just for basic democratic legitimacy reasons.

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