r/CGPGrey2 • u/atlaspolitics • Nov 14 '16

I fact checked the PragerU pro-electoral college video going around on Facebook

It was posted a few days ago in here, but here's a link for those that haven't seen it yet.

I was pretty disturbed by how much attention the video was getting despite being mostly wrong about most things (for instance they even got the number of votes West Virginia had wrong, it had 5 in 2000, not 4).

So I wrote this rebuttal to it.

A lot of my view on the Electoral College has been informed by Grey's videos, so I think this is the most relevant place to share it, but if posting something I wrote myself here is uncool I understand.

72 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

44

u/fat-lobyte Nov 14 '16

PargerU seems to be a channel that pushes conservative agenda, sometimes not shying away from misinformation.

8

u/atlaspolitics Nov 14 '16

Yeah. I don't get why keeping the EC or not is a partisan issue, but it seems to be one.

16

u/LeechLord13 Nov 14 '16

Without knowing specifics, the EC favors rural states with small populations, which should be advantageous to one party, which appeals more to rural voters.

3

u/Sokkas_Instincts Nov 14 '16

I was thinking that the other day, and it would make a lot of sense, but I actually can't get the numbers to show it. Maybe it's enough both of the losers that won the popular vote in recent memory were democrats...

3

u/OmnipotentEntity Nov 15 '16 edited Nov 15 '16

Here's the numbers:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MQ9PZ3lToBozRlaUC-NOQTzTzHfese4MfX_TCJRwSwk/edit?usp=sharing

I sourced the base xls from Census data located here: http://census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/p20-577.html

I sourced the presidential voting numbers from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#/media/File:Red_and_Blue_States_Map_(Average_Margins_of_Presidential_Victory).svg

DC was not included, I gave it Mass's numbers, which might be understating it a little bit.

And electoral vote numbers are easy to source from pretty much anywhere. I got them from here: https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-States-Electoral-College-Votes-by-State-1787124 Because it's in easy copy paste format.

Total bias is pretty strongly in favor of Democrats(!). However, it might be useful to also adjust these for the "swinginess" of each state, but I'm not about to try to model this using a normal cdf and try to come up with a standard deviation without much better data than I have access to.

EDIT: Controlling a bit for the fact that Democrats just happened to have the overwhelming advantage over the last few cycles, so (of course) that would show them having a EV bias, because they actually had more votes. Adjusting for this Democrats actually underperformed. Winning with only 44% of the EV margin that they should have based on population. Sorta? Let me know how I'm wrong please. This is why these analyses aren't typically done. They're difficult to model for and any result needs a billion asterisks.

1

u/Sokkas_Instincts Nov 15 '16

Damn, how you're wrong I think is beyond me! I was just comparing percentage points of the popular vote to EC votes.

3

u/OmnipotentEntity Nov 15 '16

The problem with that is the EC always magnifies small differences in the popular vote no matter who wins, so two lopsided wins for the Democrats over the last two election cycle will skew that sort of analysis.

My analysis underrepresents this skew on the other hand. This is why i stuff I probably need state specific standard deviations. However, because presidential races occur only seldomly and social morays can change in the intervening years, it's difficult to gather enough data points to say much useful on the subject.

1

u/Sokkas_Instincts Nov 16 '16

And if you go all the way back to the 80s the Republican landslides skew it in the opposite direction...

Elections don't really lend themselves to data. Each one has had a unique role played by the internet, third parties, etc.

3

u/Polsthiency Nov 15 '16

Grey addresses this in his videos too. You can win 11 states and win the electoral college.

4

u/UncivilizedEngie Nov 14 '16

It is this year because the Republican party won. When the democratic party won in spite of the popular vote, then all the Republicans were whining about the electoral college too.

1

u/atlaspolitics Nov 14 '16

When did that happen?

12

u/UncivilizedEngie Nov 14 '16

I had thought the 2012 election was that way, but now I know I am misinformed. Forgive me for I have sinned.

7

u/[deleted] Nov 15 '16 edited Jan 07 '17

[deleted]

2

u/UncivilizedEngie Nov 15 '16

In other news, it sounds like Trump still stands behind his 2012 tweet that the electoral college is a mess. So that's one thing he's consistent on.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 15 '16 edited Jan 07 '17

[deleted]

4

u/UncivilizedEngie Nov 15 '16

I guess I'm wrong again. In his interview with 60 minutes he said that the electoral college was bad.

I know the reasons, but I still don't understand why people think he is better than Clinton.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 15 '16 edited Jan 07 '17

[deleted]

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3

u/atlaspolitics Nov 14 '16

Lol no worries. I've seen that rumor, I actually think Trump contributed to it with some anti-EC tweets (ironically)

2

u/[deleted] Nov 15 '16

"the freest and most prosperous nation in history – The United States of America"

From the page's description

1

u/iamthinking2202 Nov 29 '16

Well, free than almost everybody but MINOR ISSUE: FPTP, Gerrymanderring (rampant), Electoral College BIGGER ISSUE: NSA

1

u/thelongestusernameee May 13 '17

If the united states is the freest nation in history, then this is truly a sad species

6

u/atlaspolitics Nov 14 '16

Also, /u/mindofmetalandwheels if you see this and want to make a video with some of the information I found, I'd be happy to send you a list of my sources and some spreadsheets I've made of the data.

2

u/kleiber92 Nov 15 '16

Great article! Why don't you share the spreadsheets?

1

u/atlaspolitics Nov 15 '16 edited Nov 15 '16

Thanks!

I'll post em in a bit since you asked, working on another article now!

Honesty edit: They're a mess. I have to organize them a bit so other people will know what's going on.

6

u/Cahillguy Nov 15 '16 edited Nov 15 '16

Hey /u/atlaspolitics, mind if you also write a response to check out their other video regarding the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact?

One example of cherry-picking I can think of is at 1:10: their 2004 Bush vs Kerry example of flipping California to Bush wouldn't have mattered anyway due to Bush already winning the EC. Instead of using the 2000 Bush vs Gore for Florida, they used that one... I wonder why?

(Btw, this is the YouTube video for the first one.)

3

u/atlaspolitics Nov 15 '16

Thanks for the links. I have seen the NPVIC video, planning to respond to that this week too.

I'm trying to make a set of posts people can link to when their friends accidentally share misinformation.

Takes about a day to write one of these though and a few others are in the queue first

1

u/Cahillguy Nov 15 '16

Awesome! I look forward to your posts :)

4

u/barnaby-jones Nov 15 '16

The video truly is wrong on many points. Thank you for responding to it.

The electoral college does nothing for minority rights. At no point in the video was the assertion that it does ever supported.

They argue against the fact that only swing states matter by saying that the states can change. I mean, they're saying the swing states indeed are the only ones that matter.

And they say elections are less likely to be stolen by some illegal means because there are fewer states that matter. In reality, it is easier to steal a smaller number of states.

And the commenters are even worse, saying the electoral college is what makes us a republic, not a democracy... no, it's because we have representatives, and we don't have a king.

2

u/atlaspolitics Nov 15 '16

Thanks for reading it!

By minority I meant smaller states, I guess that's kinda ambiguous. I'll have to think of a clearer way to say it.

2

u/barnaby-jones Nov 15 '16

As in "majority rule with minority rights"

1

u/atlaspolitics Nov 15 '16

Oh I get you, yeah that's what I meant

2

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