David Harsanyi gives a spirited defense of the electoral college over at Reason. I’m not sure I agree with his entire argument, but one great observation that he makes is that, had the 2016 election been a popular election, it would have changed the voting dynamics—people in strongly red or blue states are disincentivised from voting under the current system and would not be under a popular vote, and people in swing states would be less strongly incentivised to vote under a popular vote. Similarly, campaigning would be done differently under a popular voting system—under our current system the candidates focus on winning specific states with more attention being paid to swing states whereas under a popular vote, the candidates would have focused their efforts more uniformly.
The takeaway is that the fact that Clinton won the popular vote in an election based on the electoral college does not imply that she would have won the popular vote in an election based on the popular vote.
David Harsanyi gives a spirited defense of the electoral college over at Reason. I’m not sure I agree with his entire argument, but one great observation that he makes is that, had the 2016 election been a popular election, it would have changed the voting dynamics—people in strongly red or blue states are disincentivised from voting under the current system and would not be under a popular vote, and people in swing states would be less strongly incentivised to vote under a popular vote. Similarly, campaigning would be done differently under a popular voting system—under our current system the candidates focus on winning specific states with more attention being paid to swing states whereas under a popular vote, the candidates would have focused their efforts more uniformly.
The takeaway is that the fact that Clinton won the popular vote in an election based on the electoral college does not imply that she would have won the popular vote in an election based on the popular vote.