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The Presidential Election Will Not be Decided by the House of Representatives

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sasse

Now that pundits don’t have a BROKERED CONVENTION to dream about, they can use discussion of a potential right-wing third part to fantasize about a election THROWN TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. And of course Republican elites would love to think that the House could undo the choice of their primary electorate and impose someone more to their liking on the American public. As I think we’ve discussed before, however, this has no chance of happening for obvious reasons:

Right now Clinton has the inside track to a majority of the Electoral College. Polls are a little dodgy at this early stage of the race, but most forecasters assume Clinton would win something like the states President Obama won in 2012, and perhaps some more if Trump fails to consolidate his party. That assumption isn’t terribly important. What’s important is that adding a right-wing splinter candidate would not reduce Clinton’s share of the Electoral College at all. It would increase it. Every state gives its electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most votes. If Clinton wins 51 percent of the vote in Florida, she gets all 29 electoral votes from Florida. Crucially, states do not require a candidate to have a majority in order to win the state. And a right-wing independent candidate will draw overwhelmingly from Trump’s support. So an independent would not take any states away from Clinton.

Instead, that candidate would make it possible for Clinton to win a bunch of states without a majority. States where Clinton might otherwise fall a bit short of Trump would become blue states. Suppose in a two-candidate race that, say, Texas would give Trump 53 percent and Clinton 47 percent, giving Trump all 38 electoral votes from Texas. Then Ben Sasse jumps in the race and takes 10 percent of the vote, all of it coming from Trump. Now Texas is 47 percent Clinton, 43 percent Trump, and 10 percent Sasse.

Now, Halperin raises a different possibility — that an independent like Sasse could win purple states like Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado. But that scenario is completely fantastical. Winning purple states that Democrats have won each of the last two elections is hard. Doing it without a major-party label, and while splitting the vote with the Republican candidate, is impossible. Neither Ben Sasse, Bill Kristol, nor the reanimated corpse of Ronald Reagan is going to win a three-way race against Hillary Clinton in any purple state when Donald Trump is taking conservative votes and running under the Republican banner. The third-party candidate could push any number of states to Clinton, depending on how well they perform, but they’re not going to take any states away, which is the element required to make the plan work.

I don’t think the Texas example is the best one — even Trump will probably get more than 53%, and Clinton probably wouldn’t win it even in a three-way race. But North Carolina? Georgia? Indiana? Sure, at least. Facing an unfavorable electoral map with a weak candidate, Republicans don’t have a very good hand in any case. If a third party candidate from the right gets any traction at all, Republicans will be drawing dead.

In conclusion, as a liberal I find a Ben Sasse third part run very scary and the prospect makes me very angry. Think of how he’d bully pulpit the Overton Window! I sure hope he doesn’t run. And if he doesn’t, I hope Republicans will remember that not voting is a life-affirming consumer choice that will give you clean hands while preventing your brand from being diluted.

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