America's greatest President ever and the savior of our Union won 60% of the electoral votes with just 39.8% of the popular vote by running an explicitly hyper-ideological, ethnically-coded, regionally-based campaign. https://twitter.com/normative/status/1191764907135516675

This account stans for Lincoln. Union forever and at any price!

Knew I was gonna get this!

The difference in 1856 vs. 1860 GOP performance is largely about the German community being brought into the Republican party via an explicitly German-oriented campaign strategy. https://twitter.com/CaseyCho1942/status/1191876434760884224

Folks like Carl Schurz, 49ers and their fellow-travelers, infused the GOP with German liberal idealism. Academic research has shown that 49ers had a huge impact on electoral outcomes, Union recruitment, and even unit-level combat performance!

Without Lincoln's "German Strategy," well, there is no Lincoln. And probably no Union.

This strategy was costly! Many Republicans, being moral reformers, favored temperance and prohibition, which the German community ARDENTLY opposed (lol).

Lincoln's pivot from a pro-temperance position early in his career to a more liberal position on the national stage was pretty clearly calculated to incorporate existing German ethnic political machines into the GOP, as the NYC Irish were incorporated into the Democratic Party.

Many people will see 1860 as proof of the Electoral College being deeply flawed. I see it as a victory for the EC. In a divided situation, it produced a winner who had sufficient institutional legitimacy to raise armies and crush a violent insurrection.

I agree with Lincoln's "and the war came" rhetoric; the Civil War was going to happen at one point or another. Lincoln was the guy to win it, and 1860 was probably one of the earliest possible dates when the Union could have won it.

OH DANG, 48ers, not 49ers. 49ers were gold-hunters who went to California. Whoops! https://twitter.com/CaseyCho1942/status/1191877855740719105

Lot's of people being like "Well, Lincoln got the MOST votes."

Guys he good 39.8% of the vote. Only President to get less was John Quincy Adams, who also lost popular AND EC. And for the record, I think that in 1824 The System Worked.

THE BARGAIN WAS NOT CORRUPT IT WAS PRECISELY THE OUTCOME THE CONSTITUTION WAS DESIGNED TO PROVIDE.

Jackson was a sore loser, and I think we can all agree elites stepping in to keep him away from the presidency was a pretty good thing.

Now granted he then won two terms but look he probably could have won 2 terms 1824-1832 as easily as 1828-1836, and he would have basically done the exact same things.

Let me add an extra note:

Lincoln won the 1864 election 55-45.

But based on the distribution of population, HAD THE SOUTH VOTED in 1864, it is basically a guarantee that Lincoln would have lost in 1864.

Now OBVIOUSLY letting the south vote would have been absurd!

But acting like OH well he still got a plurality! resolves it is a bit silly since he only won his 2nd election because half the prior electorate was disenfranchised (legitimately! but still).

And remember folks, the paradigmatic examples of EC/PV splits are actually JQA and Hayes, both cases of the EC being used to force some kind of political arbitration and limit the power of the South.

Indeed, every case of EC/PV splits in the 19th century is a case where basically the north got its way despite a pretty dubious showing at the polls!

1824, 1876, 1888 all saw PV/EC splits break in favor of the north. 1860 is another clear case. 1856 of course went the other way favoring Buchanan, but this is a bit misleading since the Know-Nothings who spoiled it fro Fremont were largely conservative southerners anyways.

1880 breaks for the north as well. Garfield manages to score some tight wins with low total PV share for the Democratic Party, but only by being the only Democrat who could win New York.

All I'm sayin' is.... Americans have accepted wonky EC results many times in the past. Revolt now seems unlikely and also prima facie illegitimate. Change the system legally if you like; I'm in favor of a huge House expansion and an end to winner-take-all for states.

(Which, EFFECTIVELY, means I'm in favor of "abolishing" the current incarnation of the Electoral College system)

But.... just refusing to accept the result of an election?

It's as terrible look on progressives as from Trumpistas talking about a "coup."

It's amazing to me how many people are like, "A person who gets 39% of the vote when 2nd place gets 29% is inherently more legitimate than a person who gets 48% when the other person gets 49%."

The whole philosophical underpinning of democracy is that it provides an avenue for CONSENT.

We may allow plurality victories *for convenience* or *as a necessity*, but the idea that having a plurality inherently confers *popular* legitimacy is bonkers.

No American president has ever won the consent of so few of the electors of his time as Abraham Lincoln. He also jailed political critics and sent soldiers to open fire on protestors! It's not like him not-really-winning-many-votes was just some minor footnote!

There's this weird quasi-meritocratic assumption baked into the idea that winning a plurality is inherently legitimizing.

Yes, institutionally and procedurally, that's legitimate. And systems that secure popular consent on most areas can survive sometimes having pluralities.

But folks, if it's a winner-take-all system, it's demonstrably more democratic to let a 48% voter getter win every time than a 30% vote getter every time, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE OTHER PARTY VOTE SHARES LOOK LIKE.

Saying, "well, the 30% vote-getter is more legitimate because opposition to that candidate was fractured among more other candidates" makes literally zero sense. The opposition being fractured doesn't make it consent!

Now PERSONALLY I favor instant-runoff; I think you actually NEED majorities. The fact that NO candidate got a majority in 2016 is an issue! We need a way to procure majority consent among the electorate!

But the fact that we are very bad at actually securing majority consent does not then mean that it's somehow totally fair and fine that Lincoln getting 39.8% of the vote means he gets to suspend habeas corpus!

To be clear, I'm a Lincoln fan! I'm not criticizing him!

I'm just saying that writing his case off because he got a plurality reveals a very weird assumption about what the philosophical justification for voting actually is.