Eto lang masasabi ko: Mahirap na makakuha ng majority vote ngayon dahil sa dami ng mga high profile at major candidates na tumatakbo since 1992. From 1992 to 1998 to 2004, walang nakakuha ng majority because there were at least 4 major candidates that threw their hat in the presidential race. Unlike in the past where it was mostly a two- (or three-way) race for the presidency.
How difficult it is to get a majority if more than 4 major candidates are running? Just look the GOP Primaries. None of the candidates (mccain, romney, huckabee, giuliani, thomspon, ron paul) so far has gotten 50% of the votes in any of the important primaries and caucuses that most of the major candidates participated in.
Iowa Caucus
New Hampshire Primary
Michigan Primary
South Carolina primary
(Wyoming and Nevada doesn't count because McCain, Rudy, Fred and Huckabee did not campaign there)
People forget that Erap won with a 23.7% percentage spread against his nearest rival JDV (Erap 39.6% - JDV 15.9% - Roco 13.6%) If John McCain won by that wide a margin in today's South Carolina Primary, the old geezer would probably be doing cartwheels. If any republican won by that big, the race for the nomination would be over by now.
UPDATE: I think this is relevant to what i'm talking about. McCain Blogger Patrick Hynes takes Michael Graham to task for his silly analysis of the SC race:
McCain’s resurgence has sparked some interesting commentary, some of it not so smart. Generally speaking I ignore the sillier remarks. But I’m feeling feisty this morning, so I’m going to chime in. Take, for example, this post at the Corner by Michael Graham. I like Graham. He’s a funny guy. But his analysis is puerile. Graham argues that McCain lost the support of over 100,000 South Carolinians between 2008 and 2000. That’s just dumb. Saturday’s event was a seven-way contest with four real players. The 2000 contest was a one-on-one affair. It is only natural that the vote would scatter between a Baptist minister, a war hero, a big spending businessman, and a popular, conservative actor and former senator. Graham further argues that by claiming a third of the vote in the South Carolina Republican primary, McCain actually lost. By this absurd logic, Huckabee didn’t “win” Iowa and Romney didn’t “win” Michigan. This is not serious, but I expect we’ll see more of this kind of stuff in the following days.
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3 comments:
Here's an interesting line from MLQ's Arab News piece -
"For a political leader, what matters is not just the number who vote for you, but who stick it out with you."
I wonder if that means that someone who votes for a candidate is expected to physically defend that candidate against overthrow.
Can we draw any conclusions from this data?
Based on the polls we can see that those who voted for Erap have stuck it out with him and those who supported Gloria have also stuck it out with her. These poll numbers have always been the immovable base of both protagonists.
Like what you said, the solution here is to have a presidential runoff elections.
Agree with you John. It's rather extraordinary that a president could effectively rule a country with only a quarter of votes.
A run off seems to be the reasonable thing to do -- that should give the person a real mandate and at the very least a token approval to rule and do his/her politics.
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