The Harris campaign speedily intervened to correct Walz (which is becoming a habit), with a statement explaining that abolishing the Electoral College is not the Harris campaign’s position — and indeed that Tim Walz himself “believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College and he is honored to be traveling the country and battleground states working to earn support … .”
I think, um, all of us know just how honored he really is. But Walz, all the same, is exactly right about the effect of the Electoral College system. As much as he and his Golden State bankrollers might prefer to live in a different world, the Electoral College is precisely why, in real-world American presidential politics, Beaver County matters, as well as Beverly Hills. It’s why York, Pennsylvania, matters right alongside New York, New York. And it’s why western Wisconsin counts almost as much as Westchester.
America’s constitutional framers had their own, somewhat different reasons for inventing the Electoral College. But today, without it — under a national popular vote system — presidential candidates (and, thus, presidents) would care almost exclusively about maximizing support and running up vote totals in densely populated areas like coastal California, the northeastern seaboard, Houston, Phoenix, etc.
But because the Electoral College means that presidential elections actually unfold through 50 separate state elections, with states deciding how to allocate their electoral votes (and most choosing winner-take-all arrangements), presidential hopefuls must, as Walz says, seek to win in many different places. They must find support in at least some states where rural and small-town interests and sensibilities compete with big-city perspectives.
Consider this: In 2016, Hillary Clinton famously won the nationwide popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but lost the election to Donald Trump in the Electoral College, doing much to enflame American progressives’ distaste for the college. What’s worth noting is that Clinton’s popular vote margin that year within the borders of California was well over 4 million votes. In short, outside California, Trump won the popular vote across 49 states.
It was the extreme concentration of Clinton’s 2016 support — her lack of broad appeal around the country — that defeated her under the Electoral College.
