The Year the Independents Entered Mainstream Primaries

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.

Comments