Hillary Clinton Prediction to Win — Expect More of the Same
October 31, 2016
Predictions for the U.S. presidential election have Hillary Clinton the clear winner even before U.S. citizens vote on November 8. This statement can be made with confidence because the United States elects the president by the total of Electoral College votes. How this works is described below.
The United States Electoral College is the body that elects the President and Vice President of the United States every four years. Citizens of the United States do not directly elect the president or the vice president. Instead, they choose “electors,” who usually pledge to vote for particular candidates.
Electors are apportioned to each of the 50 states as well as to the District of Columbia. The number of electors in each state is equal to the number of members of Congress to which the state is entitled, while the Twenty-third Amendment grants the District of Columbia the same number of electors as the least populous state, currently three. Therefore, there are 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 Representatives and 100 Senators, plus the three additional electors from the District of Columbia. The Constitution bars any federal official, elected or appointed, from being an elector.
The candidate who receives an absolute majority of electoral votes (currently 270) for the office of president or vice president is elected to that office. The Twelfth Amendment provides for what happens if the Electoral College fails to elect a president or vice president. If no candidate receives a majority for president, then the House of Representatives will select the president, with each state delegation (instead of each representative) having only one vote. If no candidate receives a majority for vice president, then the Senate will select the vice president, with each senator having one vote. On four occasions, most recently in the 2000 presidential election, the Electoral College system has resulted in the election of a candidate who did not receive the most popular votes in the election.
The latest Electoral College forecast has Clinton with 258 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 157, with 123 in toss-up states.
Electoral College projections from 14 different sources, ranging from The New York Times to Fox News. None of the polls show Trump topping 200 Electoral College votes, with Clinton ahead in each scenario.
Bottom line: all Hillary Clinton has to do is to capture 12 electoral votes from the 18 states that have declared their respective candidate. This leaves a very small percentage for Trump to capture all the remaining states to win.
As stated in my September article, Hillary Clinton will have the same types of policies we’ve seen from the Obama administration for the last eight years.
Bottom line for Canada will be facing an uphill battle dealing with the pipeline in the west and the NAFTA trade agreement. In addition, Hillary has not made any firm comment to Canada’s relationship over the last two years.
We all want to a smooth transition, but just be ready for more talk and no real action with the Hillary administration.
Paul Eitmant is President and CEO of IP Group International, which serves the needs of business-to-business enterprises in over 30 countries worldwide by adding specialized expertise to the business planning and implementation process; Tel: 480.488.5646; paulipgroup@cox.net.
