As discussed in these threads:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=36980.0https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=39051.0there’s a movement afoot to get states to sign onto an insterstate compact that would award the electoral votes of the participating states to the national popular vote winner. The agreement would only go into effect once the total EV count of the participating states tops 270. Once that happens, it will be impossible for the popular vote loser to ever lose the electoral college (and thus, the election), and so, for all practical purposes, we will have shifted to a popular vote system. An interesting idea, but I think getting enough states to sign on to this, such that the participating states collectively have at least 270 EV’s, is a longshot. I doubt they’ll make it. However, the more I think about this, the more I wonder if maybe they don’t really need anywhere close to 270 EV worth of states in order to make this work. It would probably work with far less than that, provided you have both “blue” and “red” states signing on.
Consider the following scenario: A few states that tend to go Republican in most elections (for simplicity, assume that these are some of the most heavily Republican states in the country, though that assumption isn’t really required) and a few states that tend to go Democrat in most elections (again, let’s assume these are very heavily Democratic states) collectively decide that they’re sick of the swing states getting all the attention in presidential elections, so these states all agree to commit all of their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. Let’s say the Republican states in this group have a total of about 50 electoral votes, and the Democratic states also have about 50 EV’s. So, under this mixed system, 100 electoral votes are awarded to the popular vote winner, with the other 438 electoral votes are awarded the old fashioned way, on a state-by-state basis. So OK, it appears that it’s still at least theoretically possible for the popular vote loser to win the election in this system. Theoretically. But practically, considering only realistic election outcomes, isn’t it all but impossible?
I mean, if you win the popular vote, then you’ve got 100 electoral votes right there. So you only need 170 of the remaining 438 votes. And if you’ve won the popular vote, isn’t it all but a given that you’ll have 170 of those 438 in the bag? (Remember that the 100 “bonus” EV’s come from red and blue states in equal measure, and thus the other 438 will also be more or less evenly split between the two candidates in a close election.) Or to look at it another way, if you wanted to try to win the election without winning the popular vote, you’d have to just about run the table on all the swing states. Is it realistic to imagine that someone could run the table on the swing states while simultaneously losing the popular vote?
If the answer to that is “no”, then it means that, under this system, each candidate might as well devote the bulk of their resources, if not all of their resources, towards winning the popular vote, regardless of which states those votes come from. Which means that you have a system that is indistinguishable from a direct popular election. Which means that a group of states representing less than 20% of the country has the power to unilaterally transform the electoral system….which would seem to be a pretty big deal. It would mean that the National Popular Vote people could probably get what they want if they would simply set a somewhat less ambitious goal.
Or am I missing something here? Does anyone disagree that under the kind of system I’ve outlined here, the candidates would spend the bulk of their time trying to win the popular vote, and not worrying about swing states?
