rapsuperstar31 said:
The Midwest and South fear their voice won't be heard if the highly populated coasts ultimately decide who is the president. What concerns a Californian is different than that of a tough Southern oil driller or Midwest farmer. |
South ~114 million, 194 electors, 0.588 million/elector
West ~74 million, 121 electors, 0.612 million/elector
West w/ Alaska and Hawaii ~76 millon, 129 electors, 0.590 million/elector
Midwest ~65 million, 118 electors, 0.551 million/elector
Northeast ~55 million, 99 electors, 0.556 million/elector
If you focus on the broad "regions" of the US, you'll find that the Midwest is roughly comparable to the Northeast in terms of electoral college representation per person (0.551 to 0.556), while also being significantly larger. The South, likewise is comparable to the West in terms of electoral representation (0.588 to 0.590) while nearly being 50% larger in population. If you don't include Hawaii and Alaska in the West, the electoral college representation more significantly favors the South (0.588 to 0.612). If you normalize the electoral college voting representation, you see the following:
South ~112 million (-2)
West w/ A and H ~74 million (-2)
West ~70 millon (-4)
Midwest ~68 million (+3)
Northeast ~57 million (+2)
What does this tell us? The normalized data tells us that the Midwest and Northeast benefit the most from the Electoral College. The South and the West benefit the least. The raw data tells us the South and the Midwest collectively represent over half the US regardless, so the notion that they would be less represented without it is bogus. Neither region is "low populated", and every region has low population states.
The reason why the electoral college is tight when the popular vote is not is because red states with large populations are more competitive than their blue counterparts. Dropping the electoral college makes it so that the 49% of the votes of the losing party in a state are still heard. Those people still live in that state. The notion of the will of the people being all or nothing needs to end.
This is why the Midwest and the South are so over-represented in terms of presidential campaigning. They have more swing states. It has nothing to do with population. Because of the electoral college, the only criteria that matters is "how close is the state to 50% in the polls". No one else really matters.
In a world where we followed the popular vote, the South would still get the most attention, and the Northeast would still get the least. But it would be proportional to the people that live there instead of just focusing on the key swing states in each part of the country. How is this a bad thing?
