Some have complained that I’ve stopped talking about teaching political science.

Here’s the dumbest question I get around town, beginning here at Panera Bread: Isn’t it exciting to be teaching political science right now? Well, it’s not. This hugely repulsive election is really bad for the political-science brand. Who’d want to major in what’s going on right now?

And, as I’ve said before, most of our students aren’t excited. They’re often some combination of tense and repulsed. Hate and contempt are very strong political passions right now. Who doesn’t want this bleepin’ election do be over?

Still, it’s possible to grab onto some nonpartisan teaching moments about how the president is selected under our Constitution.

For one thing, I’ve always thought that the main argument for abolishing the Electoral College is that the campaign is conducted in earnest only in the “battleground” states. In most states, the outcome of the election was decided before the campaign began. And the exact popular-vote margin is irrelevant under the winner-take-all system of elector selection.. It’s too obvious that my choice makes no difference, and that’s a blow against democracy properly understood. So I’ve been very used to saying something like: “Relax, Georgia’s not a battleground state anyway.”

Georgia was a battleground state in 1992, providing Clinton his narrowest margin. But the election as a whole wasn’t close. Nobody much cared about how Georgia went.

This time, the Georgia polls are within the margin of error. And the outcome of the election is really in some doubt. We’re getting the attention — beginning with the commercials — of both campaigns. We should be excited, not to mention overwhelmed by a feeling of profound responsibility. I do see a lot more wrestling with consciences and all that. Given the pivotal place our state occupies this year, arguably it’s especially irresponsible for us Georgians to vote third-party this year. That is an argument I continue to ignore in my own case.

Nobody this time is grateful for a process that has typically given us two good or at least acceptable choices. I have to admit that there’s more enthusiasm for Trump around here than there ever was for Romney. And “I’m with her” resonates more than you might think here in the sticks. Still, many more than usual think of themselves as stuck with choosing a candidate they would ordinarily regard as unacceptable. That is, of course, mostly the case among Republicans, especially college educated Republicans.

As to the outcome of the election as a whole: An objective view of the polls is that Clinton will win the popular vote by more than 3 percent, maybe significantly more.The proper post-election observations: It’s amazing Trump did as well as he did with virtually all of the nation’s respectable elites allied against him. And probably: We’re grateful to a constitutional process that produced a decisive result and helped to put the election behind us.

Still, there is a real chance — I would say about a 15 percent chance — that Trump will prevail in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. (There is also the very minuscule chance of a tie in the number of pledged electors selected for each candidate. If that happens, you’ll see electors start to go rogue on both sides in ways that can’t begin to be predicted right now.)

Trump’s victory will come if he wins a number of large states by narrow margins — such as Georgia, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina. Meanwhile, Clinton’s popular vote victory will come from rolling up massive margins (more than Obama) in California and other states that were always safe for her, as well as doing considerably better in than Obama in Southern states such as Texas and Georgia, while still coming up short.

If that did happen, as I’ve said before, I don’t believe for a moment that much of the country will accept the legitimacy of the outcome. Remember that part of Clinton’s campaign has been properly directed against the base character and incorrigible cluelessness of the man Trump, and her voters are animated by the perception that he is many ways singularly unfit to serve. And part of her campaign has been improperly directed against the allegedly darkly deplorable Trump voters. The outcome of the election will be perceived as a profoundly dangerous threat to our Constitution and its protection of rights, considering both the leader and the people now in charge. An overreaction, you say! That’s the point — it’s an inevitable overreaction, given the dynamic of the campaign.

So up until now, one relatively soft criticism of the Electoral College has been that it can produce an outcome that deprives the winner of the energy that comes from a popular mandate. Remember how weak and vacillating Bush was prior to 9/11. But most Americans accepted the legitimacy and didn’t feel personally threatened by the constitutional process that produced his selection. Both Gore and Bush were thought to be fit men of decent character, and the prolonged and endlessly strange recount didn’t deprive many Americans of much sleep or sanity.

This time the criticism of the divergence between popular and electoral results may well be both unprecedented and much more profound. I can’t imagine President Trump being able to govern without a popular mandate. Clinton either, although she’s far less likely to be in that situation.

And given the character-based animosity — rooted in class-based divisions — driving this campaign, I have a hard time seeing either Clinton or Trump ruling well even if the outcome is just very close. This observation has nothing to do with the Electoral College, which might, after all, end up helping either candidate out by producing a more decisive result than the popular vote did (as in Obama 2012 or Nixon 1968 or JFK 1960).

I’m sure I’ve ticked off partisans of both candidates. But my challenge is to teach American politics without taking sides.