An analysis of how France’s recent election would have gone had they used American rules (with an electoral college…

An analysis of how France’s recent election would have gone had they used American rules (with an electoral college and so on). The answer is an excellent illustration of why an electoral college is a terrible idea.

Specifically, we would have ended up with a tie in the Electoral College, leading to the 12th Amendment rule of a vote in the House, with each state — or in this case, region — getting one vote, regardless of its population. Which in this case would have put the entire election in the hands of the representatives from French Guiana and the islands of Réunion and Martinique, all of which went in the election for Jean-Luc Mélenchon — the fourth-most popular candidate.

While the idea of the colonies deciding the rulers of the country certainly has a certain appeal to it — not to mention some poetic justice — it does seem like a dubious way to decide on the future of a country, especially given that (despite the seeming similarity in the America-style picture below) Macron beat second-place Le Pen in the first round by a wider margin than Bush beat Kerry in 2004, and is projected to beat her nearly 2:1 in the second-round election held under the actual French rules.

(The actual French rules are a first-round election in which everybody runs, followed by the top two finishers going head-to-head in the second round. Straight-up popular vote in each.)