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Subject If someone tells you Clinton won popular vote and Electoral College needs to be abolished

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Original Message Tell them that's cool because if there was no Electoral College Trump would have won the popular vote by over 2 million.

Wait for the HUH? And explain:

Electoral college depresses voter turnout in non competitive states.

Let's look at CA. Average voter turnout was 55.5% in 2016. CA turn out was 43% (second lowest to HI). But CA has the highest population. Clinton's margin of victory was 2.5 million votes in CA.

In a scenario where there is no Electoral College, voter turn out would normalize and increase. There are no more competitive states because everywhere is competitive.

So voter turnout would normalize somewhere between 60-70% in every state.

What does this mean? Higher independent turnout in every state, higher R turnout in Blue states and D turnout in Red states.

The idea that "California's electoral votes are a foregone conclusion, so why vote?" disappears.

Let's look at what happened Tuesday. Here are the votes by party percentage:

Trump got 90% R, 9% D and 48% I
Clinton got 89% D, 7% R and 42% I

Let's say there is no Electoral College and voter turn out in CA was 65%

(Based on 18M registered CA voters, 44% D, 29% R, 27% I )

Trump 5M
Clinton 6.1M

This means without the Electoral College Clinton wins CA by 1.1 Million NOT the 2.5 Million she actually won by.

Trump would also gain vote totals in NY and IL under these assumptions. Clinton would gain some in TX but not nearly as much because the party registration spread is only 41 R 37 D. Gains in low population red states and highly competative states like FL would be negligable.

THIS IS THE DIRTY SECRET

The Electoral College helps DEMOCRATS in Presidential elections. You know how they say they have an easier path to 270? You won't hear any serious Democrats calling for the abolition of the Electoral College.

I'm not calling for it either. Eventually demographics will change and Rs would never win an election again under popular vote (50-100 years from now).

I'm curious to war game this out though state by state to see what the Trump Clinton race would have looked like under a popular vote model

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