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So excited that this will be out in the world tomorrow! And grateful to everyone who helped make it happen.
Michael Geruso
347 posts
Michael Geruso
@MikeGeruso
Author–After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People. Former White House CEA senior economist. Economics professor, UT-Austin. Personal account
- Happy to share the news that I’ve started a term at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
- My hat is off to Slate's @JHWeissmann--not just for a great, careful piece on the University of Texas Electoral College Study, but also for coming up with a better way to visualize one of our main results.New paper: The Electoral College plays dice with the national popular vote, and in the last 20 years the dice have been very obviously loaded for the GOP slate.com/business/2019/…
- 1/ @JonahDispatch claims polarization is why Americans want to abolish the Electoral College. That’s wrong. Ditching the EC has been popular (even more popular than today) in every decade since Gallup began surveying opinions on this in 1948. Some history...The fault lies not in the Electoral College, but in ourselves. latimes.com/opinion/story/…
- Happy to be organizing the NBER Healthcare meeting this Thur/Fri with Amy F, Kate H, and Heidi W. Join us via youtube. Great lineup of papers on mental health, racial disparities, private provision v socialized medicine, bundled payments, and more. youtube.com/channel/UC79EL…
- Replying to @DKThomp and @1SnoozyQIt turns out that no change to the Electoral College other than a national popular vote would alter that statistic much. Not splitting up each state's EC ballots according to state vote shares. But the NPV compact could do it. @NatlPopularVote
- Replying to @MikeGeruso7/ In sum, greater polarization in recent years has coincided with *less* support for abolishing the EC. Intensity of support may be a different story, but we don’t have the data. Even so, as of 2019, Americans still favor a national popular vote 55% to 43%. (end)
- Replying to @MikeGeruso2/ In 1948, Americans were 56% to 31% in favor of abolishing the EC (14% no opinion). In 1977, the support was overwhelming: George Gallup wrote: "By a 5-to-1 margin the public favors a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the Electoral College."
- Replying to @MikeGeruso6/ After 2016, support for abolishing the EC has shot up among Democrats fallen off a cliff among Republicans. So polarization does matter here, but not in the way @JonahDispatch seems to think. On net, polarization has eroded overall support for a constitutional amendment.
- Replying to @MikeGeruso4/ Support for a popular vote has also been bipartisan until recently. There was a dip among Rs following Bush 2000. But it recovered: In 2011, self-identified Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all supported replacing the EC with a national popular vote.
- Replying to @MikeGeruso3/ In the 1960s through 1980s, Americans overwhelmingly supported a constitutional amendment to create a national popular vote.
- Replying to @gelliottmorrisAmericans' support for abolishing the Electoral College has been very consistent, hovering around 60% in the 2000s and ranging between 50% and 80% in just about every survey since Gallup began asking 1948. x.com/MikeGeruso/sta…
Replying to @MikeGeruso2/ In 1948, Americans were 56% to 31% in favor of abolishing the EC (14% no opinion). In 1977, the support was overwhelming: George Gallup wrote: "By a 5-to-1 margin the public favors a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the Electoral College." news.gallup.com/vault/192704/g… - Replying to @mattyglesiasProbabilities as percents are just too unrelatable for normal people. Try this: Your half-elf rogue needs a 3 or higher on a 1d20 dexterity check or she falls into the Endless Pit of Gloom.Oh Boy. “Trump has almost no chance” says @CillizzaCNN even as he cites a 21% probability from @538politics and 13% from @gelliottmorris. Imagine climbing on a plane with those odds of crashing and thinking: Yup, this is fine. cnn.com/2020/09/30/pol…
- It's easy to imagine that winning the Presidency but losing the popular vote is a symptom of extraordinary political times. But it's not. It's been likely in close elections for the past two centuries. We've just had a small sample of close elections...
