To wake as president

: There is no ceremony more splendid than the inauguration of an American President. Yet Inauguration isa ceremony of state, of the visible majesty of power. And though the powers of the office are unique, even more spectacular and novel in the sight of history is the method of transfer of those powers

—

the free choice by a free people, one by one, in secrecy, of a single national leader.Whether Americans have chosen this leader well or badly is of the most immense importance not only to them but to the destiny of the human race. Yet, well or badly done, no bells ring at any given hour across the nation when the voting is over, nor do any purple-robed priests wait that night to anoint the man who will soon be the most powerful individual in the free world. The power passes invisibly in the night as election day ends; the national vigil includes all citizens; and when consensus is reached, thesuccessful candidate must accept the decision in the same rough, ragged, and turbulent fashion in which he has conducted thecampaign that has brought him to power. He is still half-man, half-President, not yet separated from the companions of campaign who have helped make him great, nor walled off from the throngs he has caused to crowd and touch him over themany months.

–

The Making of the President, 1960

, Theodore H. White

On November 4

, 2008, approximately 120 million US citizens (and likely some non-citizens) will, in the poetic wordsof Theodore White, silently transfer presidential power from George W. Bush to either Barack Obama or John McCain.Irrespective of the victor, this will be an election of firsts in many respects:For the first time since 1960 - and for only the second time in US history - a sitting senator will be inaugurated asPresident. The presidential annals have been historically fraught with Governors and Vice Presidents withWarren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy the two notable exceptions.If Obama prevails, he will be the first non-Caucasian president in history (duh).If McCain is victorious, a woman will assume the Vice Presidency for the first time in history. (The first woman ona major presidential ticket was Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. The Congresswoman from New York was given thenod by the Democratic nominee Walter Mondale, but the hapless Democratic team was trounced by 20 points byReagan re-election campaign.)A Republican victory would also make McCain the oldest individual to be inaugurated as a first term president.Furthermore, it would represent the largest age differential between the president and the VP (28 years).Irrespective of the winner, the 2008 election cycle will be the most expensive election

ever

. Using data fromprevious elections and the recent primary contests, experts estimate that anywhere between

8 to 12 billiondollars

will be spent by various interests groups and independent parties as well as the presidential, senate, andparty campaigns, to influence the makeup of the US federal government in 2009. Furthermore, towards the end of the contest, the McCain and Obama campaigns will each spend roughly

30 million dollars a day

on advertising.By comparison, all five political parties in Canada will collectively spend

half

this amount money for the

entire

2008 Canadian election.On the first Tuesday in November of every four years, however, the expensive electoral machinery ceases and ordinarycitizens take over. In community centers, libraries and even churches, individuals will be faced with a plethora of questions relating to the makeup of their federal government: their choice for president, for senator, for congressman,and so forth.Long before a single vote is cast, pundits and prognosticators will attempt to extrapolate the eventual outcome based onexit polls, statistical models, historical data, and plain intuition. In the main, their estimations will be framed in thecontext of the three questions we now examine:How does someone become President of the United States?Do the nuances of the system favor one candidate or another in this particular election cycle?What questions should we be asking on Election Day (i.e., what are the predictive data-points)?

U.S Election Primer for 2008

By Sheldon Fernandez

The Election Process

As was popularized in the protracted election of 2000, the President of the United States is not chosen by a nationalpopular vote. Instead, the presidency is decided by the

Electoral College

, a body of representatives who elect thepresident in Congress on January 6

months after the general election is held. Unbeknownst to most of the population,U.S citizens

do not

cast their vote for a presidential candidate, but rather for a body of political party representatives(

electors

) who in turn vote for that candidate on January 6

.For years, these details have been obscured from the election process because previous contests were so lopsided. In1996, for example, Bill Clinton trounced Bob Dole by 8 million votes and defeated him in the Electoral College 379 to159. Similarly, the first president Bush overwhelmed challenger Michael Dukakis by 7 million popular votes andprevailed in the Electoral College 426 to 111. Every year, however, academics would hint towards an unusualpossibility: that a candidate might win the Electoral College yet lose the popular vote (i.e., that the man electedpresident would receive fewer votes than his opponent.) In the 2000 election, their warnings were finally realized:despite receiving more than a half million more votes than his opponent, the Democratic nominee Al Gore lost theElectoral College and hence the White House to the current president, George W. Bush.In a close race, therefore, it is important to recognize that

the national polls so often quoted by the media areunreliable predictors of the election because they fail to capture the nuances of the Electoral College

. As with the2000 election, a candidate may win the popular vote and lose the presidency.This point is particularly applicable in the context of the upcoming Election. Statisticians generally maintain that oncethe national spread gets beyond 5 or 6 points, an Electoral College win by the popular vote loser is extremely unlikely(see: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/29/opinion/main4135237.shtml

)However, as of this writing, most polls have the two candidates within a few points of one another and within the margin of error.A most disastrous outcome for liberals would be a popular vote win for Obama but an Electoral College defeat (whilethe reverse case would undoubtedly unnerve conservatives, it would likely not spark the same outrage since GeorgeBush

’s

2000 election victory was achieved under these very circumstances).In light of these details, a most obvious question arises:

what the hell?

Doesn’

t the election go to the guy with the most votes?

The Electoral College

The creators of the U.S. constitution (often referred to as the

framers

) did not trust the general “uneducated” population

to choose their president. Instead, they allowed each state to choose

“electors”

to vote for a candidate on January 6

ina gathering known as the

Electoral College

. As originally envisioned by the framers, a state

’s

electors were elites andaristocrats, chosen by the local government and sent to Congress to choose a president. Gradually, states relinquishedthis power to the general population, the last being South Carolina in 1836. Today, citizens vote for electors who in turnvote for a presidential candidate. These electors are regular citizens and long-time party loyalists and their role iscosmetic

: they simply vote for their party’s candidate in Congress

on January 6

and return home, honored that theirparty has chosen them to cast a formal vote for president.Given the closeness of the 2008 race, the arcane details of the Electoral College and its current implementation coulddetermine the next leader of the free world. The following points offer some insight into this confusing system:The number of electors allotted to each state is equal to its numerical representation in the Congress

–

thenumber of congressmen for each state plus two senators. The number of congressmen for a state is, in turn,determined by that

state’s

population. Thus, the most populous state in the Union, California, has 55 electoralvotes (53 congressmen + 2 senators) whereas the least populous state, Wyoming, has 3 votes (1 congressmen + 2senators). In 1961, the District of Columbia, though not recognized as a state, was given 3 electoral votes so itscitizens could participate in the process of choosing of their president.

To win the presidency a candidate must receive a majority of the votes in the Electoral College. As the collegeconsists of 538 members

the magic number is 270

. If no candidate can obtain a majority the election is throwninto the Congress

–

the House of Representatives choosing the President, the Senate choosing the Vice President.Because of the two party system in the United States, an Electoral College stalemate might appear unlikely.However, one scenario both campaigns will be prepared for on election night is a

tie in the Electoral College

with both Obama and McCain receiving 269 electoral votes

For example, if Missouri and Arkansas voteDemocratic and the remaining states fall as they did in 2004, this unlikely scenario will occur. Since congresswill likely be in Democratic hands in 2009, Obama would become president. In a

de facto

sense, then, Obamaneeds 269 votes for the presidency whereas McCain needs 270.

Because every state has two senators, two of the electoral votes allocated to each state are independent of thestate

’s population.

This system

inherently favors smaller states

. California, for example, with a population of 37 million people (based on 2007 figures), has roughly 664,000 people per electoral vote. Wyoming, on theother hand, with a population of 523,000 people has a person-to-electoral vote ratio of 177,000. Thus, in termsof the presidential election,

a voter in Wyoming theoretically yields more influence than a voter in California

. AsRepublicans tend to carry the smaller southern states and Democrats more populous metropolitan ones, thecurrent system favors the Republican candidate on a

per voter basis

.Forty-eight of the fifty states award their electoral votes using the

Winner Take All

system (cryptically referredto as

First-past-the-post

procedure). Under this system,

whichever candidate receives the most votes in the state isawarded all of the state

’

s electors

. Never have the shortcomings of this system been more evident than in the2000 election: despite winning the state of Florida by only 537 votes (out of 6 million cast), George Bush receivedall 25 electoral votes

–

nearly 10% of the votes required to win the presidency.The two exceptions to the Winner Take All system are

Nebraska and Maine

. Both states award one elector foreach congressional district and two votes to the state's overall winner. In the 2008 election, the unique nature of both these states is probably irrelevant: Nebraska is overwhelmingly Republican and will be carried by JohnMcCain; Maine is disproportionately Democratic and will go for Barack Obama.As discussed, the Winner Take All System employed by most states allows for the possibility that the candidatewho wins the national popular vote might not win the Electoral College and hence the presidency. This scenario

–

which has occurred four times in American History (1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000)

–

can arise when a candidatewins a small number of states by a significant margin and loses a large number of states by a slim margin. It isworth noting that

because of the Winner Take All system, the degree to which one wins a state is irrelevant

. For

example, though McCain seems to be doing extremely well in a small, concentrated pool of ‘red states’, current polls show Obama with smaller (but still substantial) margins in a larger group of blue and ‘purple’ states.

Finally, it is interesting to note that in most states

lectors are not legally bound to vote their party’s

candidate

. In a close election,

each campaign might try to “steal”

an opponent’s

elector to swing the contest intheir

candidate’s

favor, an idea that political guru Jeff Greenfield explored in his book

The People’s Choice

.Unlikely? Check out this

supremely ironic