What do Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump,
and Michael Bloomberg have in common? They're all independents
running or considering running for the Presidency. Sure, Sanders and
Trump are trying to win the Democratic and Republican nomination
respectively, but Sanders is an independent who registered as
a Democrat just for the primary, and Trump has changed his positions
more times than one can count (and no one really can be sure what his
position now is, either). Bloomberg, a Democrat pre-2001, elected
Mayor of NYC as a Republican, and reelected as an independent, had
considered running for President. Yet just the other day he
concluded a run as an Independent is unfeasible.
If Sanders and Trump are really
independents, why did they chose to enter the primaries? And why
didn't Bloomberg? The answer to the second question is speculation,
but seems straightforward. Bloomberg didn't really want to be
president. He is a perennial
potential candidate, that never commits. But it makes sense for him
not to run, when one considers the rules for becoming the President
of the United States.
That's because:
The rules of the United States make
it impossible for an Independent Candidate to win the Presidency.
The original rules for electing the
President of the Untied States were included in the Constitution
(we're going to skip the Articles of Confederation). The rules have
been amended twice: once because the original rules had some serious
flaws that actually mattered, and a second time because the rules
still had some minor flaws that could (but haven't) matter.
The Constitution is split into seven
articles, the second of which describes the executive branch, the
office of the President. This is split up into four sections, which
have a total of seventeen clauses. Let's go to Article 2, Section 1,
Clause
3, where the founders laid out their vision for
how the President would be elected. I'm not going to include the
text, but you can view it at the link above. I'm going to summarize
it.
Article 2, Section 1, Clause 3 says
that after the Electors are chosen they will each vote for two
persons. The person with the greatest number of electors of fifty
percent will become President. If there is a tie between the top two
persons then the House of Representatives (from now on the House),
will vote between the two of them, with each state receiving one
vote. For the vote to count at least two-thirds of the states must
vote, and to win, the candidate needs a majority (more than fifty
percent) of the total number of states.
However, if no one has a majority of
electors on the original ballot then the Congress (House and Senate)
draw up a new ballot with the top five candidates (according to
electoral votes). The Congress votes on those five, with one vote per
state. They will use the same rules as listed in the previous
paragraph. Congress will keep voting until this achieves a president.
Do you see any problems with that
system? Since there is no differentiation between votes for the
President and Vice-President it can result in unintended results. And
it did. In 1796,
(the third election of the United States), the leading members of the
two parties received the first and second most votes. So even though
John Adams was a Federalist and Thomas Jefferson was a
Democratic-Republican, they were bundled together. It would be as if
Clinton were President and Trump Vice-President. Yet it wasn't until
after the next election that the problem was fixed. In 1800
Jefferson and Aaron Burr ran together as Democratic-Republicans, and
they received the same number of electoral votes because the electors
had two votes and they all voted for both Jefferson and Burr. With no
way to differentiate (Jefferson was the supposed Presidential
Candidate), it fell to the House to decide the tie. With only two
Democratic-Republicans to choose from, the Federalists hated
Jefferson more, and most voted for Burr. Burr did nothing to dissuade
them, but the Federalists couldn't win it for him. In the end it took
thirty-six rounds of voting before the Federalists ended their
standoff and voted for Jefferson.
In 1804 the 12th
Amendment
was ratified. It changed a few aspects of the election process. Most
importantly, electors would vote distinctly for President and for
Vice-President. This would prevent the strange results of 1796 and
1800 from happening again. Additionally it made only the House
responsible for choosing from the top three candidates for President.
They would still only have one vote per state.
An interesting,
but irrelevant fact. Massachusetts rejected the 12th
amendment at the time, but ratified it long after it passed. 1961!
The rules for electing the president
were further (but only slightly) modified in the 20th
Amendment. They come into effect in the event that no president is
elected by January 20th.
So what does all this matter? Looking
back at Article 2, Section 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution a few
facts are clear. To win the presidency a candidate either needs to
win a majority of the electoral college, or (and here we need
Amendment 12 as well) needs to have the support of the majority of
the states through their representatives in the House.
In the 2016 House (assuming everyone
voted by party), the Republican's hold 33 states, the Democrats have
14, and the remaining 3 states are split. The Republican candidate
would definitely win in this case.
You may be wondering, has the House
ever had to vote for the President since the adoption of the 12th
Amendment? In 1824
four candidates, all from the Democratic-Republicans (there was no
other party), split the electoral vote and none received a majority.
The candidate with the most electoral votes and popular votes, Andrew
Jackson, lost in the House to JQA (Jackson won the rematch four years
later).
None of those four were independents,
the party just couldn't decide on a candidate and regional
differences took over. There has been no other election decided by
the House, but there have been strong independent candidates.
In 1892
James Weaver ran as a populist and secured 8.5% of the popular vote,
with 22 of the 444 electoral votes. That's 4.9% of the electoral
vote.
In 1912,
former president Theodore Roosevelt ran as a progressive against his
former party, the Republicans. While he managed to beat sitting
president William Taft with 88 (of 531) electoral and 27% of the
popular vote, he ended up handing the election to Woodrow Wilson, who
probably would have lost if Roosevelt hadn't broken with Taft. The
socialist Debs also picked up 6% of the popular vote with no
electoral gains. Note, Roosevelt received 17% of electoral vote.
Finally, in 1992
and 1996, businessman Ross Perot ran against the Republican and
Democratic tickets. In 1992 he managed 19% of the popular vote, but
won no electoral votes. The following election, his support slid to
8% popular and still no electoral votes.
In none of these cases did the
independent campaigns manage to prevent a mainstream candidate from
receiving half of the electoral votes. It would be best to say, in
spite of what others may think, that they deprived one of the major
parties of votes, securing the victory for the other party.
These three examples highlight that
independents received only a small proportion of electoral benefit
from their popular vote. Both Weaver and Roosevelt managed to turn
their popular vote into electoral votes, but at the rate of roughly
2% popular for 1% electoral. Ross Perot failed to earn a single
electoral vote with 19%. The strength of Weaver seemed to be a
regional strength, for most of his electoral wins came in the west,
while Roosevelt was able to turn his former presidency to his,
comparative, advantage.
As I mentioned early, Michael Bloomberg
had considered running this year. He was worried about a Trump vs
Sanders match-up. His consultants put together a electoral map that
was released to the New
York Times. The consultants believed that Bloomberg would
take massive swaths of the Eastern United States … somehow. While
that might be true if Independent Bloomberg was in a three way race
with Independent Sanders and Independent Trump, it is hard to imagine
him winning against them with a D and an R next to the respective
candidates. Right or wrong, many citizens vote for whoever has the
support of their party. No independent has a chance against that.
In the unlikely event that Bloomberg
was able to pick up more electoral votes than either Sanders of
Trump, it would still be nearly impossible for him to cobble together
the required majority of electoral votes to secure the presidency.
While someone with more of a statistical background (such as 538)
could come up with a better statistical analysis, it seems that
Bloomberg would have to take at least sixty percent of the popular
vote to become President. That might seem high, but even at fifty
percent (and assume Trump and Sanders split the remaining fifty
percent equally), the challenge of winning states would remain. It's
not enough to win the popular vote, since a state rewards only the
winner with electoral votes. Sanders and Trump would still win,
despite Bloomberg's chart, the Democratic and Republican stronghold
states. Their popular vote would be concentrated. Bloomberg's
popular vote would be (I imagine), strong in the Northeast, but
relatively diffuse everywhere else. Even with fifty percent of the
popular vote they would deny him the majority of electoral college
votes.
In this case, the whole result of the
election would rest in the hands of the House of Representatives,
where chaos would rein. Trump would have a significant, almost
incomprehensible advantage with 33 of the necessary 25 states in the
hands of Republicans. They would vote for him, and if they didn't (if
they did choose Bloomberg), the ferocious outpouring of wrath of the
base of the republican party, directed at their Representatives would
be terrifying.
So I think it is safe to say, as
Bloomberg himself concluded (in spite of the charts), that his
candidacy would hand Trump the election. Ultimately, there is no path
for an Independent Candidate to secure the Presidency.
Unless they run within the party
system.
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