I've seen people citing the "Popular Vote' results of this past election and I felt a need to point out that we don't know what that is because we didn't have one.
The Electoral College Election is a different stimuli than a Popular Vote Election.
Like offering teenagers Pizza and expecting that they'll consume an equal poundage of salad.
Or if you have a contest throwing a ball for distance and then say "this guy won the Accuracy Contest because his balls fell in a tighter pattern". You weren't having an accuracy contest. Your strategy for a distance contest may have caused you to do things that were antithetical to a tight group. You might have thrown the ball in a way to take advantage of the wind each time and the wind changed.
If you had a Popular Vote Election the Campaigns would have been different and the turnout would be different. Polls are always of "Likely Voters" I've never seen a poll of people who don't care, why would you ask someone that doesn't care what they think? So we have no idea what a Popular Vote would bring.
We didn't have that election.
A Popular Vote would bring out Blue People in Red States and Red People in Blue States that never bother because of the winner take all feature of the EC in their State. If peoples vote was weighed nationally you wouldn't have the complacency you saw in Michigan and Wisconsin by people who figured that their state had been their color for six elections and the polls said they had a 4 point lead so why bother?
A Popular Vote would be a completely different landscape. A completely different Stimuli and the result might wind up exactly the same or different but you don't know because we haven't done that.
The Electoral College Election is a different stimuli than a Popular Vote Election.
Like offering teenagers Pizza and expecting that they'll consume an equal poundage of salad.
Or if you have a contest throwing a ball for distance and then say "this guy won the Accuracy Contest because his balls fell in a tighter pattern". You weren't having an accuracy contest. Your strategy for a distance contest may have caused you to do things that were antithetical to a tight group. You might have thrown the ball in a way to take advantage of the wind each time and the wind changed.
If you had a Popular Vote Election the Campaigns would have been different and the turnout would be different. Polls are always of "Likely Voters" I've never seen a poll of people who don't care, why would you ask someone that doesn't care what they think? So we have no idea what a Popular Vote would bring.
We didn't have that election.
A Popular Vote would bring out Blue People in Red States and Red People in Blue States that never bother because of the winner take all feature of the EC in their State. If peoples vote was weighed nationally you wouldn't have the complacency you saw in Michigan and Wisconsin by people who figured that their state had been their color for six elections and the polls said they had a 4 point lead so why bother?
A Popular Vote would be a completely different landscape. A completely different Stimuli and the result might wind up exactly the same or different but you don't know because we haven't done that.