What if electoral votes were awarded proportionally?

[StateBoiler]

Done this for some elections. There's different ways to do it. For example,

(not touched the numbers in awhile, so may be off 1 or 2 in some spots, this may not have the final final vote count)

Proportional by State (Highest Remainder Method)

Trump 261
Clinton 260
Johnson 15
Stein 1
McMullin 1

if you say a person has to reach 1 full candidate to receive 1 (i.e. to receive 1 delegate in a state with 10 votes, must reach 10%):

Trump 267
Clinton 267
Johnson 3
McMullin 1

if you say whoever receives most votes in a state must receive at least 1 more delegate than 2nd:

Clinton 262
Trump 257
Johnson 17
Stein 1
McMullin 1

then say that category must reach 1 full delegate to receive 1:

Clinton 269
Trump 265
Johnson 3
McMullin 1

if you want to do the D'Hondt Highest Averages method:

Clinton 268
Trump 266
Johnson 2
Stein and McMullin 1 each

if you want to do say convention-style delegate rules (receive a majority get all, if no one gets a majority greater than some percentage receives proportional, 5% limit below):

Trump 284
Clinton 251
Johnson 2
McMullin 1

I have 12 different methods in a spreadsheet going back to 1992, and in all of them there's no way to get Clinton to 270 in 2016. The only way Gore in 2000 gets to 270 is under convention-style delegate apportionment.

The current Electoral College is the only method that produces a winner in 1992.

The elections I really want to do are 1980, 1968, 1948, and 1912. 1860 would be fun in theory.

Minor parties in proportional state allocations would really focus on the big states. To get a vote in California you need a little less than 2% for instance. It would also drive a more national campaign for the two main parties.

[StateBoiler]

What if instead of winner-take-all, candidates won electoral votes in each state based on the percentage of voters that voted for them?

The winner of each state would get two electoral votes, which would be the at-large votes, and the rest is based on proportion.

How would you handle Rhode Island with 4 EV?  The clear victor at 55% has "about half" of the popular vote.  Who gets the 4th EV?

I think it should go to the victor; unless an argument could be made that someone else won one of the two Congressional districts.  Then you would be describing how Nebraska and Maine handle it.

Most likely the D'Hondt rule (or something similar) is used. So for Rhode Island you'd get a 2-2 split.

Of course the main disadvantage of this is that 4 EV states would essencially become useless as they would almost always have a 2-2 split unless there's a massive landslide (you'd need a 60-40 split to get a 3-1 EV split) or a third party candidate

You could add a qualifier of the candidate that wins a state must receive 1 more delegate than the person that gets 2nd. For example:

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It does create situations like this however occasionally. This is the most egregious example of the elections I have done:

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If you add a secondary qualifier of "to receive 1 electoral vote you must receive 1 whole electoral vote", it gets rid of this example as for Utah to receive 1 vote you'd have to reach 20%. That rule however does lead to 3 electoral vote states sometimes where whichever party has completely given up on the state, they're under 33.3% of the vote and the winning candidate sweeps the state 3-0.

[StateBoiler]

So updated my 2016 numbers yesterday to match Dave Leip's. Here's how every election I've done looks.

National Level Numbers

Method 1: Purely Proportional (Highest Remainder Method)
Method 2: Must Receive 1 Full Electoral Vote in Method 1 in order to Receive 1
Method 3: D'Hondt National (Highest Average Method)

State Level Numbers

Method 4: Proportional (Highest Remainder Method)
Method 5: Must Receive 1 Full Electoral Vote in Method 4 in order to Receive 1
Method 6: Proportional, Winner Must Receive at least 1 more Electoral Vote than 2nd
Method 7: Must Receive 1 Full Electoral Vote in Method 6 in order to Receive 1
Method 8: D'Hondt State (Highest Average Method)

Convention-style Allocation

Method 9: Receive a majority of a state's vote, you get all Electoral Votes; if no one receives a majority, everyone above a 15% cutoff line receives proportional allocation
Method 10: Same as Method 9 except it's a 10% cutoff line
Method 11: Same as Method 9 except it's a 5% cutoff line

Method 12: Current Electoral College

2016:

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2012:

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2008:

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2004:

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2000:

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1996:

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1992:

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1980:

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My goal is to do every post-Civil War election and then write up something formal about this. If reform were to ever occur, it'd have to be done at a national level. But based on what I've done so far, I would be in favor of one of Methods 7 thru 11. I think 9 thru 11 would receive better reception since it'd be easy to explain to the vast majority of people that don't understand how math works.