And, in a roundabout way, you can thank the Electoral College. Because if the popular vote was all that counted, he might decide that the 100k votes in Michigan were worth staying uncommitted so he could pick up the pro-Israel lobby elsewhere, like on Long Island and in NYC. But Biden is all but guaranteed to win NY, while Michigan is a toss-up.
Florida also has a sizable Jewish population, but the former swing state has turned red from an influx of retirees over the past several election cycles.
If by “influx of retirees” you mean “even worse systemic election tampering than there already was”, then yes.
The majority of the people in Florida aren’t Republicans. Only the majority of the people the Republicans allow to vote.
A mass migration of Northeasterners and Midwesterners into Florida, many of them conservatives leaving Democratic states, has led to the state’s politics turning sharply to the right, experts say.
“The notion of the ‘Big Sort’ … is really proving itself,” said Matt Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst. “That’s the idea that people move based on the politics. … For a lot of retirees, places like Florida are appealing, especially if they’re already conservative.”
Many of those new residents may have been attracted to Florida because they see it as a right-leaning state, said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, especially amid Gov. Ron DeSantis’ opposition to almost all COVID-19 restrictions.
But it also goes the other way … “If you’re a liberal retiree up in the Northeast, if you’re Jewish retiree in New York City right now, you see this stuff out of Florida, the Nazis and stuff, do you really think you’re going to come down here?” Isbell said.
The idea of the Electoral College makes more sense when you consider it to be the weighted average of 50 elections. It keeps elections confined to a state-by-state event. Imagine the shit show if we had a full popular vote, and a candidate won by 5 votes, so the entire country got recounted?
But having the Electoral College be actual people is silly. And it’s weighted all wrong, because the House hasn’t expanded in 100+ years. Maybe if the House were twice it’s size, things might be more representative.
There is an actual algorithm to determine House apportionment based on the population in the 50 states. One of these days, I want to take the time to figure out if Trump would still have won if the House were twice the size in 2016, or whether that would have skewed the weightings just enough for Clinton to have won.