What if trump wins but loses the popular vote by 8% or so

I will drive my car through the gates of the White House to open the way for the patriots.
(just kidding NSA)

 

Then expect more social unrest. Having a majority of the people not chosing their leaders isn't a sustainable approach especially when the leader who wins without anywhere near the popular vote leads by only pandering to a small subset of America and treats every other group as their enemy.

 

For such a scenario to happen shouldnt some shady shenanigans take place?

i.e I heard in a podcast that the republican lawmakers can decide on their own that Trump has won if the counting takes too long.

 

They can also bribe and scare electors into voting against the popular vote in their district/state.

 

This is a possibility. It's very unlikely but it's possible that Trump could lose the popular vote by as much as 10% and still win. As it is I think it it's a given that Biden will win the popular vote and will by a larger margin than Clinton but this is why can't relax at all in this election and keep on pushing people to vote all around the country.

If the election looks very close in the swing states but the popular vote margin is large I think that will make legislators in swing states and the Republican party as a whole think twice about how they interfere in the vote counting and certification. If the vote is really that skewed that likely means that the Republican party is taking a beating in the House and has likely lost the Senate.

 

If Republicans use the courts to throw out ballots, there should be revolution. No question.

 

The US Constitution says that states can decide how they assign their electors to the electoral college. So states that have Republican legislatures could theoretically assign their own electors and just ignore their own elections. The problem with this though is that most states already have their own laws that say the election in the state decides the elections. If voting and the vote count is very problematic such as what happened in FL in 2000 it's possible then that the legislature steps in and says since the election is inconclusive they will declare their own electors. This did happen following the Civil War when Southern states essentially invalidated their own elections.

The other possibility which did happen in FL is the state government stops the counting of the vote at a certain time and declares a winner even though there might still be questions about the votes.

 

Only Florida and Arizona could try to reassign their electors because they have Republican legislators and a Republican governor. There's no guarantee they would be united in this effort.

Finally, they risk massive civil unrest.

 

GA and OH also have Republican governors and legislatures. I think DeWine in OH wouldn't go along something like that but Kemp is all in on Trump.

And yes there would be massive civil unrest.

 

I don't see those states being deterministic to the outcome. If Biden wins GA and OH, he's won the election anyway because there is no way he takes OH but loses PA, WI, and MI.

 

Don’t you put that evil on me @Air Langhi

 

I’m guessing that chance is <1%. It would be crazy. Likely there would be all kind of conspiracy theories driving major social unrest.

 

Would dark monied interests really let this happen?

Seems like a shadow Koch bro would force Donny n Friends to drink from the bad boxed wine if it ever spiraled out of control.

Oligarchy Over Party Over Country...

I didn't get ten times richer since this pandemic hit. China's billionaires profited even more than ours.

An all out riot or civil war would stop all that free money Mnuchin and Powell are printing to the uberrich.

Neither president is going to stop that gravy train any time soon.

 

I’d never vote again if Trump somehow lost the popular vote by a whopping 8-10 points and still won the presidency unless they got rid of the electoral college in the future

What would be the point?

the country would be ruined beyond belief with 4 more years of Trump...any semblance of Democracy would be dead

I’d become so apathetic

 

4 more years ! 2024 Weeeee MAGA!

 

Math says otherwise.

No, it's not. The reason to push people to vote is because we want a 10% type margin so there is no doubt who won the election and because we want to win other local, state, and federal races. Fearing that a popular vote margin of 10%+ won't be enough is NOT the reason to go out and vote. If you think Dems might lose at 10% or 15% regardless, that's actually a reason for people to say "why bother?"

 

I tend to agree that winning OH and GA are longer shots but the polling across several states isn't consistent. I think MI is looking very out of reach for Trump but WI and PA are both tightening while Biden seems to be getting momentum in OH.

 

If Biden wins the popular vote by 10%, FL/GA/OH/AZ aren't going to decide the race.

 

It's slim but not impossible. FiveThirtyEight did an analysis awhile back that showed there was a very small chance that of Trump winning the Electoral College while losing by as much as 10%. Consider Biden most likely will rack up huge numbers in large blue state while also greatly increasing on what Clinton got in large red states like TX, GA and OH. He might still lose those states by 1 or 2% and in the meantime loses the swing states again by less than a 1%.

Yes I've said the same thing many times and I'm not predicting a difference that high in the popular vote and winner of Electoral college just saying it's a slim possibility. That said any chance of Trump winning will almost certainly involve him losing the popular vote. If I recall from the FiveThirtyEight analysis they had it would take a 5% difference in the popular vote margin for Biden to have over a 90% chance of winning the Electoral College.