Life can be a real bitch eagle
but that's democracy in action
Its a bit like old age - a real bitch
but the alternatives really suck
"This is the fifth time in US history that the candidate who won the electoral college vote did not win the popular vote.
It happened three times in the 19th century, but the most recent incident occurred in 2000, when George Bush won the electoral college by two votes, but lost the popular vote by 540,520 votes.
That election was controversial, due to a Supreme Court decision regarding a recount in Florida, which awarded that state's electoral votes to Mr Bush.
But Australia is not immune to this kind of anomaly — in 1998 our Westminster-style democracy
delivered prime minister John Howard 80 seats in the Lower House to opposition leader Kim Beazley's 67 seats, despite the Labor Party beating the Coalition in the nationwide two-party preferred popular vote 50.98 per cent to 49.02 per cent.
Analysing
Australian elections dating back to 1949 shows that this also happened at the 1990, 1969, 1961 and 1954 elections.
Despite this, there are no calls in Australia to change the system, while in the US the electoral college receives widespread criticism, including this tweet from 2012:
Follow
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
2:45 PM - 7 Nov 2012
Ironically, it just put him in the White House.
