I expect this is how it would play out. Candidates would go to where the voters are. And their campaigns would do serious data mining to suss out where the largest concentrations of uncommitted/persuadable voters were.
And it would be about time, since currently, Presidential campaigns pay attention to exactly one of these, our five most populous states.
They ignore 4 of these 5 already - and the remaining one gets a world of influence on the nominating process, a fact that wouldn’t change if the EC went kaput.
And I suspect that RI would be visited because most of its population is in Providence, which is a pretty fair-sized city near some other big cities. A candidate could easily do a campaign swing through Boston, Providence, and Hartford on the way to a couple stops in the NYC area, and would have plenty of reason to do so. Similarly, most of Delaware’s population is in the Wilmington area, and Wilmington’s just down the road from Philly.
Meanwhile, practically our entire Presidential campaign has taken place in maybe 9 states.
As for small states getting ignored - well, every state has the same representation in the U.S. Senate, regardless of size, which of course means that small state *voters *have way more Senators per capita than everyone else does. Barring a Constitutional amendment doing away with the Senate (yeh, right), small-state residents will continue to wield disproportionate influence in our nation’s politics. This is why I’m throwing money at the Heidi Heitkamp (ND) and Jon Tester (MT) Senate campaigns.
I just don’t see why… particularly when it comes to media buys and so forth. It’s not like it’s possible to speak to only one state worth of people at a time.
And that would still be WAY better than the current system, in which candidates stick to Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the rest of the country, red and blue alike, is ignored…
True. We’ve heard plenty of seemingly “rational” reasons why the EC makes sense, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s asinine.
Imagine if someone told this story:
"In Namibia, the presidential candidates go to three or four villages and try to convince people to vote for them. Then, depending on the majority vote from each village, a set number of points is awarded to one candidate or the other based on the number of villagers. All those votes that were given to the “losing” candidate won’t be worth a thing (they won’t be added to the votes of your countrymen elsewhere, they are just voided). These points awarded to the majority candidate are then added to other points from other villages across the country that the candidates never went to. Therefore, a vote only counts IF you happen to live in one of these 3 or 4 villages and IF you happen to vote for the guy that the majority of your fellow villagers vote for.
WHAT??
Ok, so that’s a little clunky. But we wouldn’t call that democracy…
You are totally right, it’s an awesome night. Multiple plot lines, front line reports, possibly tomfoolery, math, analysis, crazy anticipation. I can’t wait…
If the primary system remains the same then swing states would stop mattering as much, presidents would stop campaigning in small towns in Ohio and Florida and spend a LOT more time in big cities in California and Texas. Money would become even more important in campaigns because you would have to start running ads in just about every media market.
I think that the advertising would run in the big cities but would likely be targeted at the suburbs. More undecided voters there.
Note that politically, this means that abolishing the Electoral College would be a big negative for the Democrats, since the structural advantage of CA, NY, and IL would be gone, and they would have to compete in those states. The Republicans would similarly lose the automatic advantage of Texas, but that’s a smaller loss.
I disagree. Think of all the voters in CA, NY, or IL who don’t vote because they know their state is not in play- now their votes matter. There’s literally millions of poor Democratic-leaning voters in those states that don’t vote regularly. There are also Republican voters who don’t vote for the same reason, of course, but I see no evidence that there are more such Republican voters than Democratic voters.
I get what you’re saying, and it would reduce the disadvantage. I still tend to think that such marginal pickup in those states would not outweigh the advantage of winning those states’ electoral votes without having to campaign there. For the Republicans, by contrast, the change would be all upside.
I still disagree. Basically, take the normal voting pattern in the General Election, and assume that every one of those people will still vote in a popular-vote election for President. Of all the voting-age citizens who didn’t vote (as it is now), how many are likely to vote D and how many are likely to vote R? I think demographic studies indicate that there are more non-voting Democratic people in most elections then non-voting Republican people. So it would be all about get-out-the-vote, and I think the Democrats would have an advantage.
Why does it matter where candidates campaign? I predict smart candidates would adopt “50 State” campaigns even if Wyoming and Alaska only get a single visit each. Otherwise the opposition could cut into their vote tally in places they neglect to visit. More important than physical location is how candidates would craft their policy initiatives to appeal to a broad audience without the EC to magnify the results of piecemeal parochial appeals to key demographics in battleground states.
Here’s my question: how much does it accomplish to do the compromise: destroying winner-takes-all without destroying the electoral college? You know, every state dividing its electoral votes in proportion to the number of votes for each party?
I also believe you would also see less moderate campaigning from both parties. Republicans would need to be more conservative when visiting the southern regions and the Dems would need to be more liberal when visiting the big cities.
I disagree with Monk - I actually think you would see the Democratic party move a bit leftward and the GOP move quite a bit leftward.
The easy way to see this is to compare the median voter nationwide with the median state. The “tossup” states right now are actually quite a bit more conservative than the median American voter. The “center of gravity” would move left.
As one example, things like cap-and-trade would be significantly more politically viable if a CA voter counted as much as an OH one.
You are totally right, it’s an awesome night. Multiple plot lines, front line reports, possibly tomfoolery, math, analysis, crazy anticipation. I can’t wait…