Nate Cohn

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@JEMesserschmidt the easy proof, again, is that trump still wins the electoral college in a blow out if you remove the countermajoritarian aspect of the electoral college — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@JEMesserschmidt ultimately, thinking about EC bias as a product of countermajoritarian bias profoundly misunderstands the real source of the anti-Democratic bias, which is the point of the article — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@JEMesserschmidt ultimately, thinking about the EC bias as a product of countermajoritarianism profoundly the source of the anti-Democratic, which is the point of the article — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@JEMesserschmidt perhaps i was unclear, but 'it's not really' countermajoritarian was a reference to degree, and the following 'to the extent that it is' line was an explicit acknowledgment that there is a small and not terribly important countermajoritarian element — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@JEMesserschmidt hillary clinton lost a net-four electoral votes due to the small state bias, or something like that. she lost a hypothetical majoritarian electoral college by like 70 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@JEMesserschmidt let me put it this way: the electoral college bias against joe biden and hillary clinton would not materially decline if you eliminated the countermajoritarian small state bias of the electoral college — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@JEMesserschmidt if the majoritarian aspect of the EC--the electoral college votes allocated based on population--was actually majoritarian, clinton would be the president and 2020 wouldn't be close, etc. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@JEMesserschmidt it has a small countermajoritarian bias, but it's really not the bias that's hurting democrats. biden and trump both won 25 states, you know — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@JEMesserschmidt well, it is sort of complicated, since an EC that was 20% as countermajoritarian as the Senate and 80% pure majoritarian would be roughly 1/5 as biased as it currently is and we'd be in clinton's second term — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@esseeeayeenn this is not the real problem with the EC. trump still wins in 2016 without it. the main bias with the EC is that it's winner take all, which is the same as bias as first-past-the-post, but with even more distortion because single states (essentially districts) have so many votes — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

TLDR: an anti-Democratic bias is not the same as a countermajoritarian bias. That happens to make it easier to fix without constitutional reform. And makes it harder for the GOP to justify their edge; this isn't intentional or inherent to the design — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

The UK parliament, similarly, is not countermajoritarian. But the party who wins the most votes isn't assured of winning the most seats, just like the US (and yes it's happened before) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Or put differently: there's nothing about the House and only very little about the Electoral College that inherently disadvantages the majority. But they are biased against Democrats, who happen to be the larger party rn — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

The Senate, on the other hand, really is designed to check the majority (the extent that's good or bad is another question, ofc). What's fascinating is that the Senate, EC and House are all similarly biased against Dems, despite being intended to be biased in very different ways — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

The Senate, on the other hand, really is designed to check the majority (the extent that's good or bad is another question, ofc). What's important is that the Senate, EC and House are all similarly biases against Dems, despite being intended to be biased in different ways — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

One minor thing: just because something is biased doesn't mean it's counter-majoritarian. The House is conceived to reflect majority will. The Electoral College is complicated, but it's not really counter-majoritarian and to the extent it is, that's not why it's biased — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

A nice FiveThirtyEight summary of some of the various GOP electoral biases, which were quite extreme in 2020 and could conceivably get worse (by their definition, the GOP E.C. edge grew from 3.5 to 3.9 points with the new population figures on Monday) https://t.co/qBKmUgKA1x — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

RT @Neil_Irwin: First quarter GDP +6.4% annualized, right on expectations. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

There are all sorts of ways to get a tie without a red Minnesota, but only a red Minnesota lets the NY--> MN electoral vote, which was decided by a handful of people in the census, decide the election https://t.co/NkzjGPI2HB — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

There are all sorts of ways to get a tie without red Minnesota, but Minnesota has to be red for the NY-->MN electoral vote, which turned on a handful of people in the census, to decide the election — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

The one that would really hurt https://t.co/5wMbk42Ag5 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

A nice summary of an important debate playing out on the left right now: how to talk about race in political messaging https://t.co/mUccrc45XT — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

RT @maggieNYT: Victoria Toensing also had a search warrant executed on her home https://t.co/YTIlS5S5Op — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@FrankCarcaterra @conorsen yeah but minnesota is blue, so the election isn't decided by the extremely close call on MN v. NY getting the last electoral vote — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Best effort yet https://t.co/gBIK37R9c1 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@NateSilver538 @conorsen i think that's true from playing around with it, but i think this exercise mainly demonstrated that it's hard to get a tie with a red minnesota. not sure if that's generalizable — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@johnrobertgage well sure, but it's not one in which the election was decided by the census, since the NY-> MN electoral vote stays blue — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

It's a tough map to pull off, but there are a few other ways to get there (if Dems get 269 and MN is red, then Democrats lost by the margin of MN getting the final vote over NY) https://t.co/4ML8Y8lqmG — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@conorsen it's tough to pull off, though here's another version https://t.co/FpeRejhnLW — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

It's 2028. Kamala Harris loses the election by the margin of... 89 census takers in New York and Minnesota https://t.co/8q5Nxt2Mxw — PolitiTweet.org