The Electoral College is the big factor in a third-party nightmare for Democrats

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[–]TiberSeptim 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think removing it would be worse though. Basically if you went to pure popular vote, then nobody outside of a major metropolitan area matters at all. Los Angles, New York, SanFransisco, Chicago — that’s enough to win outright.

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It doesn't seem right to adjust the value of a vote from a city down compared to a vote from a small town, so that one party is competitive. The idea is that they'll adjust their policies to have the more general appeal.

Clinton's margin over Trump was less than 3 million.

Bush beat Kerry by 3 million, so a republican can, in living memory, actually win. Although to be fair, he was buoyed by the brutal and unjustifiable invasion of Iraq for some reason. Perhaps people thought that it has something to do with the September 11 attacks.

[–]TiberSeptim 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Except they won’t because even if every small town agrees on politics, the population is such that you get at least 40% of the vote from the top ten mega cities. The option that would work in that case is to mostly ignore those small towns and simply focus on urban issues.