• Lord_ToRA@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    electoral college and first past the post helps republicans and hurts democrats…

    Please explain.

    • PupBiru@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      democrats almost always win the popular vote… the electoral college is part of the mechanism that gives smaller states that tend to be more republican greater voting power than larger states

      and as far as FPTP, third party candidate votes tend toward more democratic candidates. given the spoiler effect (a 3rd party candidate draws the most votes from the 2 party candidate they’re closest to: if they didn’t run, most of their votes would have gone to their closest candidate. given they’re unlikely to win due to how the mathematics and sociology of voting systems work, a successful 3rd party candidate is always bad for their voters), that means that if RCV or similar were implemented, on balance those votes for 3rd parties would mean democrats get more votes

      • Lord_ToRA@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This hypothetical is based on ranked choice voting being suddenly implemented everywhere at once.

        We also need to fix the gerrymandering, as well as the overall vote-limiting laws, in red states which would drastically change how those states appear within the scope of the electoral college. Ranked choice voting would greatly help with that.