America uses a system to select the president that is unique in the world. As you know, rather than having a national election on election day, America has 51 separate elections (the fifty states plus the District of Columbia). Candidates for president, therefore, must work to assemble a group of state-by-state victories totaling 270 electoral college votes, as 270 votes is a majority of the total of 538 available electors.
The number of electors allocated to each state is the sum of its number of senators (always 2) plus its number of House members. So, states with small populations and only 1 House member have three electors, while larger states have more electors. California, the most populous state, has 55 electors. We allocate three electors to the District of Columbia.
Under this system, small states have a say in the presidential election disproportionate to their size. The smallest (by population) state, Wyoming, has one elector per 192,920 residents, while Texas has one per 763,050 residents.
Here’s each state’s total number of electors:
state number of votes
Alabama 9
Alaska 3
Arizona 11
Arkansas 6
California 55
Colorado 9
Connecticut 7
Delaware 3
Dist. of Columbia 3
Florida 29
Georgia 16
Hawaii 4
Idaho 4
Illinois 20
Indiana 11
Iowa 6
Kansas 6
Kentucky 8
Louisiana 8
Maine 4
Maryland 10
Massachusetts 11
Michigan 16
Minnesota 10
Mississippi 6
Missouri 10
Montana 3
Nebraska 5
Nevada 6
New Hampshire 4
New Jersey 14
New Mexico 5
New York 29
North Carolina 15
North Dakota 3
Ohio 18
Oklahoma 7
Oregon 7
Pennsylvania 20
Rhode Island 4
South Carolina 9
South Dakota 3
Tennessee 11
Texas 38
Utah 6
Vermont 3
Virginia 13
Washington 12
West Virginia 5
Wisconsin 10
Wyoming 3
Total 538
Various arguments are made as to the desirability of retaining the Electoral College, as you’ve read. Whatever the arguments, we know that twice in the last 20 years, the winner of the national popular vote went to the loser of the election.
In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by 543,895 votes, but lost the election after controversially losing the state of Florida by a margin of just 537 votes.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 2.87 million votes, a margin of 2.1%. A swing of just 79,646 votes (0.06% of the total votes cast) combined in three states would have given Clinton the presidency.
In 2020, it was even closer. Though Joe Biden won the popular vote by over 7 million votes, a margin of 4.5%, a swing of just 42,918 votes (0.026 of the total votes cast) combined, again in three states, would likely have caused Biden to lose in the Electoral College.
Does the fact that a candidate can win the popular vote by over 7 million votes and still come within a whisker of losing the election matter when you think about this issue?
What’s your opinion? Given what you’ve read, should we keep the Electoral College? Should we try to achieve a “workaround” like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact? Should we push to amend the constitution?
Sample Solution
6).
Theory 2
The success or decline of retailers is frequently “attributed to the business environments” including customers and competitors (Pradhan, p 65). Thus, in consistence with “Darwinian approach of ‘survival of the fittest’, those retailers that most effectively adapt to economic and demographic changes are most likely to grow and prosper” (Pradhan, 65). Evolution theory is “based on the effects of the external, uncontrollable environment on the retail industry and the organisations operating within it” (Fernie et al, 2015, p. 67). However, it has been argued by many theorists and researchers that organisations ability to “adapt to their environments attributes” mostly to their flexibility and power “rather than the environment” (Morgan, 2006). Thus, the survival can be determined by the organisations understanding of environmental stability, resistance to change, and their development of mechanisms that support them during uncertainty.
Theory 3
Retailers emerge, develop, mature and decline in direct response to internal and external circumstances (Hall, Knapp et al 1961; Sun, 2002). The RLC provides a useful perspective to predict the business performance of retail institutions as it specifies the series of stages that every retailer goes through. However, the RLC has been criticised because of the “difficulty in defining the exact time when the organisation moves from one stage to another” (Fernie, J et al. 2015, p. 33). Thus, in order for the concept to be useful the retailer would want to know exactly when the growth or maturity phase has ended, in order to implement marketing objectives and strategies accordingly. Arguably, it may be difficult to detect the time spent at every stage as the lifespan of many companies becoming shorter with new retailers entering and exiting the markets rapidly (Fernie, J et al. 2015). “The theory assumes that retailers are passive victims of the market change and competitor action”, thus failing to recognise that they may achieve sustainability of their business through other aspects, for example, brand repositioning. Evidently, number of retailers have successfully “repositioned their organisations’ to grow their businesses to prove that the inevitable decline predicted by the RLC is not necessarily the case” (Moore, 2010).
Application of Theory
The following section aims to support the explanation of A&F failure by critically analysing the quotes identified in section 1 and expanding on the theories discussed in section 2. Throughout the section, emergence of competitors, change in consumer expectations, economic shift and functional stupid management, have been identified as the primary causes of failure.
Environmental Evolution Theory
A&F is positioned within “a dynamic and rapidly changing industry” (Akehurst and Alexander, 1995, p. 67) which creates an ambiguous environment due to the rate of change and innovation created by the external stakeholders (Male, 2003). With a large offer and low switching costs, consumers possess bargaining power (Porter, 1979) over apparel retailers and are consistently looking for the best quality and cheapest prices, unless they have loyalty to a particular brand (Perrier, 2013). Thus, due to the highly turbulent nature of the industry, firms having to constantly change and adapt to grow and survive (Male, 2003). The structural change of the industry and survival of retailers can be explained using Darwinian ‘natural selection’ theory. A&F has been disrupted by the new, ‘fittest’ species including Forever 21, who have managed to ad