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In a blogpost yesterday on the Electoral College, NY Times columnist Ross Douthat reported that “if you believe Sean Trende’s fascinating analysis,” Richard Nixon won the popular vote in the 1960 presidential election. I hadn’t seen this claim before, and I’m a dork, so I popped over to take a look.
Trende’s piece, published over the weekend, notes that in 1960 Alabama voters didn’t vote for presidential candidates, but for individual electors, and that they we allowed to split tickets. There were eleven Democratic electors and eleven Republicans, and voters could choose anywhere from one to eleven candidates from the two columns.
Five of the Democratic electors were “loyal,” or pledged to Kennedy, while six were unpledged and eventually wound up voting for Senator Harry Byrd. Those eleven electors all won, and the Republican electors all lost.
The question Trende asks is how we should count these votes. (Since far more votes were cast than there were voters, we can’t just tally up the scores for each slate and do it that way.) The traditional approach has been to credit Kennedy with the number equal to his highest scoring elector, and Nixon with the corresponding total for his, but as Trende notes, that results in Byrd getting no votes in a state where he obviously had substantial support.
Instead, Trende suggests, it makes more sense to give all the Democratic votes to Byrd instead of Kennedy, or split them on the basis of how many electoral votes each received. In either case, he notes, the result is a Nixon victory in the overall popular vote. Nixon won!
But no, he didn’t. Here’s why:
Nationally, according to the source Trende himself relied on, Nixon received 34,108,157 votes in 1960, and Kennedy received 34,220,984. If we set Alabama aside — take all their votes off the table, and tally up the rest of the country without them, here’s what we’re left with:
Kennedy: 33,902,681
Nixon: 33,870,176
That’s a Kennedy victory of more than 32,000 votes. So in order to claim that Nixon beat Kennedy nationally, we have to argue that Nixon beat Kennedy by nearly 32,000 votes in Alabama. And that’s not what happened — Kennedy’s poorest-performing elector in Alabama received 316,934 votes. Nixon’s best-performing elector received 237,981.
It’s not easy to say how the votes should be carved up, since Kennedy had fewer electors on the ballot than Nixon. But the evidence suggests that the vast majority of those who went to the polls voted for all the electors they could. In a senate race on the same ballot, the two candidates received a total of 554,064 votes. If you divide the total number of votes cast in the presidential race by 11 — the maximum number of electors a single voter could support — you get 555,592.3 people voting, almost exactly the same.
The vast majority of Alabama voters in 1960 voted for a full slate of electors, and the strong majority of those chose the Democratic slate. Perhaps ten thousand or so voted only for Harry Byrd’s electors, and not for Kennedy’s, but the overwhelming number took what they were given from the party they supported.
Still not convinced? Let’s look at it another way. Figure that 600,000 Alabama voters went to the polls in 1960. That’s almost certainly too high, but it’s within the realm of plausibility, and approximates the best-case scenario for the ticket-splitting hypothesis. In that scenario, John Kennedy’s worst-performing elector received the support of 53% of the state’s voters, and Nixon’s best-performing elector received the votes of 40% of them.
Kennedy beat Nixon in Alabama. Kennedy beat Nixon outside of Alabama. Kennedy beat Nixon.
There’s no other way to spin it. Sorry.
Just a quick weird note.
Over the weekend I noticed that ersatz punk mall-store chain Hot Topic had a selection of Free Pussy Riot shirts for sale, and tweeted about it. A few folks tweeted back to wonder whether PR was seeing any of the proceeds, so I wrote to HT to ask. And this morning I got an email back:
“Yes, we purchased the shirts through the band management’s merchandising company.”
So there you go. The shirts are legit, and Pussy Riot is getting their cut. Good to know.
Many undocumented immigrants eligible for a reprieve from deportation under the Obama administration’s DREAM Act-inspired policy shift are choosing not to apply because of fears of their applications being used against them if Mitt Romney wins the presidency.
In June President Obama announced that he would be establishing a process by which those young people who would be eligible for permanent residency and eventual citizenship under the DREAM Act — those brought to the US by the age of 15 who completed two years of college or enlisted in the military — could apply for a pre-emptive deferral of deportation proceedings. The policy, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), took effect in August.
The administration’s shift followed directly on the mounting of a series of increasingly high profile occupations of Obama campaign offices by DREAM Act-eligible activists.
Romney has pledged to end the DACA policy, but says he will honor any reprieves from deportation already approved when he takes office. Given the program’s complex documentation requirements and high fees, however — and the glacial pace of government bureaucracy — many DACA-eligible young people are hanging back, afraid that an incomplete application could give the government ammunition to use against them in the future.
Only seven percent of the nation’s estimated 1.2 million eligible immigrants applied for DACA in its first month, and though that number has since doubled, only a tiny fraction of applications have so far been processed. Of 180,000 applications submitted so far, only 4,591 have reached final approval. That’s less than three percent of applications, and 0.4 percent of the total eligible pool.
Romney has sent mixed signals on policy for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. He opposes the DREAM Act but says he’d work to give them a chance at permanent residency as part of comprehensive immigration reform. What that policy would look like, however, and how it would be implemented, remain impossible to assess.
“Now it’s a war on women? Tomorrow it’s going to be a war on left-handed Irishmen or something.”
—Paul Ryan, three days ago.
“But gosh, to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone — that’s a great idea… We can make changes in the way our culture works to help bring people away from violence.”
—Mitt Romney, five days ago.
• • •
The alleged shooter in today’s mass shooting in Brookfield, Wisconsin is a man named Radcliffe Haughton. Mr. Haughton’s wife left him not long ago, and shortly thereafter someone slashed the tires of several cars in the parking lot of her workplace.
Haughton’s estranged wife believed that he was responsible for the slashings, and thirteen days ago a judge granted her an order of protection against him. Haughton appeared in court three days ago in connection with that complaint, and was ordered to surrender all weapons in his possession to the sheriff’s department.
Today’s shootings took place at Haughton’s estranged wife’s workplace. It is not yet known if she is among the three dead and four injured at the scene.
This is our country’s war on women. This is the crucial nexus between single parenthood and gun violence. It’s real, and it’s an epidemic — half of all women murdered in the United States are killed by a husband, boyfriend, or ex, and they are never at greater risk than when they leave an abusive relationship.
If you want to talk about the social roots of violence, Mr. Romney, this would be a pretty good place to start.
8 pm update | Police have confirmed that Haughton slashed his estranged wife’s tires earlier this month, and that she subsequently obtained a four-year restraining order against him. All three of those killed today are said to have been women, but there is still no word as to whether she is among the dead.
8:15 update | Local media say that all seven of those Haughton shot were women, and that his two daughters (who I’ve seen referred to as his stepdaughters in other reports) have been confirmed safe.
9:20 update | One local television station is now reporting that Haughton’s estranged wife Zina Haughton was one of the three women he killed today. The four injured women are all expected to survive.
10 pm update | Although neighbors remember Haughton as a “good guy,” court records show that Haughton was prosecuted in 1984, 1990, and 1991 on battery charges. Twice he was found not guilty, and once — in 1991 — a domestic battery charge was dismissed when the complaining witness failed to appear.
In the last 21 months he was arrested three times. In January 2011 he was arrested for disorderly conduct, on charges that were later dismissed. In January of this year he pled guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct and sentenced to a year’s court supervision. A few weeks ago he was reportedly arrested in connection with the slashing of his estranged wife’s tires.
10:30 update | The January 2011 disorderly conduct charge, like the 1991 domestic battery charge, was dismissed when an essential witness failed to appear.
“I have no secret plan for peace. I have a public plan. And as one whose heart has ached for the past ten years over the agony of Vietnam, I will halt the senseless bombing of Indochina on Inaugural Day. There will be no more Asian children running ablaze from bombed-out schools. There will be no more talk of bombing the dikes or the cities of the North. And within 90 days of my inauguration, every American soldier and every American prisoner will be out of the jungle and out of their cells and then home in America where they belong. And then let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad.”
—George McGovern, 1972
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