COMMENTARY / World

Voter suppression can’t save the Republicans

The 2020 election was a win for democracy with the answer to Biden’s victory in the polling data

One of the great ironies in U.S. elections in recent times is that states with the fastest growing income inequality now vote for Democrats while those states where inequality has grown less are more likely to cast their vote for Republicans. | REUTERS

By James K. Galbraith
Project Syndicate

Jan 21, 2022

AUSTIN, Texas –

With the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot now over, let’s focus on the big picture.

The great anomaly of the 2020 U.S. presidential election was that Joe Biden won the national popular vote by 7 million votes, yet came within 43,000 (in three close states) of losing the Electoral College, and thus the election. In California alone, Biden had 5 million more votes than he needed, and in New York, another 2 million.

So far this century, only Barack Obama has won decisive victories in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. In 2000 and 2016, the popular-vote winner lost the election. In 2004, the result turned on a single state: Ohio. This anomaly is not only persistent but constitutional, which makes it practically unsolvable.