How would campaigns be run with no Electoral College?

[izixs]

The first few campaigns would be a bit wonky and would probably go to who ever adapted the quickest. And those winning campaigns would set the precedent for how things would work (for a while at least) in the post-EC years.

So the question is then: How does one win in a popular vote contest? Indeed, base turn out becomes important, but not just in Texas, California, Florida, and New York. Early in the campaign season you could probably expect to see campaign activity (through probably few candidate visits) in pretty much every part of the country. Getting a few thousand extra votes for the dems in Idaho by getting on the air early there isn't going to be abandoned. If the election is razor close, who ever is smart about nabbing the low hanging fruit in 'enemy' territory the best will probably win.

Major rallies will be centered around major cities, but its laughable that both candidates will sit in LA and NY all campaign season. You'll see Republicans in Philly and Democrats in Salt Lake City. Yes there will probably be fewer candidate small town rallies, but that's because no longer are a few states the swing voting block but the entire country, and the entire country just has to many small towns to make such a strategy effective. Now, there will likely be many surrogate sponsored rallies, local politicians looking to get better known to their communities and help things up the ticket, and some of that might even be semi-spontanious. I'd imagine campaigns would produce a number of local rally videos where the presidential candidate talks to the audience. Overall though, this empowers local politicians, as it makes them important in the bigger scope of things. Which might mean the federal government is more responsive to local needs in the long term, which might not be a bad thing.

Finally, there might be an effort to have more presidential debates or to radically change the kind of silly system we have right now for them. General election debates could perhaps be setup so that they take place where both candidates have campaigned the least, to help increase candidate access. Of course this means at least one debate in Fairbanks Alaska which could be amusing.