One of the more interesting things to watch during this election cycle is the way in which the democratic nature of the process has been called into question. There have challenges to the very legitimacy of the process.
Donald Trump began casting these doubts in Iowa when he questioned the legitimacy of the result after the Cruz campaign supposedly circulated the rumor that Ben Carson might have quit the race in the hopes of flipping his votes to Cruz. Cruz finished first. Carson finished fourth. Trump, who finished second, complained the loudest.
We have had debates about super delegates, caucuses, and delegates chosen without regard to the winner of the primary. There have been questions about whether a candidate who received a plurality of votes (Trump until New York) should be treated like the winner without receiving a majority. (Trump mooted the issue after his home state win started a string of majority victories).
Through it all, an incredibly important issue has begun to surface. We have seen poll after poll show that partisanship colors the perception that people have of everyday facts. A related concern had emerged that such partisanship (even intra-party primary partisanship) can become so strong that the desire to see your side be victorious overcomes your desire to see the person who has the most votes win. This belief can be so strong that some supporters back fill in a story whereby had the rules of the voting been different (read fair in this view) then their candidate would have won and therefore it doesn’t matter that he didn’t. Of course Sanders supporters are the chief propagators of this view, with claims that all would have been different had the New York primary been open to all, or had the media not counted super delegates in each candidate’s delegate counts.
We don’t quite know how widespread such beliefs are but it is fairly widespread and that is troubling. If you don’t believe the person with the most votes should win, you don’t really believe in democracy. For democracy to collapse doesn’t require a majority of citizens to abandon it. All it takes is a substantial minority. The tantrums thrown so far don’t yet rise to that level but we all should be vigilant so it doesn’t get there.
The Scorecard
The Scorecard is a political strategy and analysis blog. Our hope is to provide information and insight that can be found nowhere else into how and why things are happening in American politics. Unlike many political pundits, we will tell you who we think is going to win as an election approaches; we will tell you why; and we will give you a sense of our level of confidence. Ours is a holistic approach, one that takes in as many numbers as possible but is also willing to look past the numbers if need be. When we turn out to have been wrong, we will let you know. When we are right, we’ll let you know that too.
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About Me
Author Jason Paul is a longtime political operative who got his start as an intern in 2002. He has been a political forecaster for almost as long. He won the 2006 Swing State Project election prediction contest and has won two other local contests. He had the pulse of Obama-Clinton race in 2008 and has been as good as anyone at delegate math in the 2016 race. He looks forwards to providing quality coverage for the remainder of the 2016 race.
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