1. The narrow focus on 'swing states' would vanish.
Just look at 2012. Neither Georgia not Minnesota was ever really in contention even if they drifted into being decided by margins of less than 8%.
- Georgia 0 16 3,900,050 2 1 304,861 7.82%
North Carolina 0 15 4,494,570 2 1 93,288 2.08%
Florida 29 0 8,490,159 1 2 74,309 0.88%
Ohio 18 0 5,350,140 1 2 107,259 2.00%
Virginia 13 0 3,843,744 1 2 143,360 3.73%
Pennsylvania 20 0 5,647,224 1 2 283,730 5.02%
Colorado 9 0 2,564,959 1 2 138,584 5.40%
New Hampshire 4 0 710,928 1 2 39,587 5.57%
Iowa 6 0 1,581,752 1 2 91,773 5.80%
Nevada 6 0 1,014,918 1 2 67,806 6.68%
Wisconsin 10 0 3,071,434 1 2 210,019 6.84%
Minnesota 10 0 2,936,561 1 2 225,942 7.69%
When only 130 of 538 electoral votes matter, 80% of the population is either a given or off-limits. That is a pity. Populous Orange County and the Central Valley of California (greater Sacramento excluded) did not matter in this election even if they voted for Mitt Romney. Greater Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and the counties along the Mexican Border from El Paso to Brownsville did not matter even if they voted for Barack Obama. Florida was split down the middle.
If America had a truly national Presidential campaign, then we would have seen Barack Obama campaigning in Dallas, El Paso, Austin, San Antonio and Houston and Mitt Romney campaigning in Fresno, Anaheim, and Bakersfield. President Obama would have been campaigning in the Black Belt of the South -- and Mitt Romney would have been campaigning in Staten Island, which split about as evenly as did Florida.
To be sure the current polarization of the States has become more severe than it was in 1980. Would it surprise you to find that Barack Obama won a larger percentage of the vote in 2008 (50.86%) than Ronald Reagan got in 1980 (50.75%)? To be sure, independent and third-party nominees got nearly 8% of the popular vote in 1980 and it is hard to discern whether such was largely protest votes by people disgusted with the low achievements of Jimmy Carter yet scared of Reagan...
- Illinois 26 0 4,749,721 1 2 3 376,636 7.93%
Pennsylvania 27 0 4,561,501 1 2 3 324,332 7.11%
Missouri 12 0 2,099,824 1 2 3 142,999 6.81%
Michigan 21 0 3,909,725 1 2 3 253,693 6.49%
Vermont 3 0 213,207 1 2 3 12,707 5.96%
Louisiana 10 0 1,548,591 1 2 3 84,400 5.45%
Wisconsin 11 0 2,273,221 1 2 3 107,261 4.72%
Maine 4 0 523,011 1 2 3 17,548 3.36%
New York 41 0 6,201,959 1 2 3 165,459 2.67%
Delaware 3 0 235,668 1 2 3 5,498 2.33%
North Carolina 13 0 1,855,833 1 2 3 39,383 2.12%
South Carolina 8 0 890,083 1 2 3 13,647 1.53%
Kentucky 9 0 1,294,627 1 2 3 18,857 1.46%
Mississippi 7 0 892,620 1 2 3 11,808 1.32%
Alabama 9 0 1,341,929 1 2 3 17,462 1.30%
Arkansas 6 0 837,582 1 2 3 5,123 0.61%
Tennessee 10 0 1,617,616 1 2 3 4,710 0.29%
Massachusetts 14 0 2,524,298 1 2 3 3,829 0.15%
Hawaii 0 4 303,287 2 1 3 5,767 1.90%
Maryland 0 10 1,540,496 2 1 3 45,555 2.96%
Minnesota 0 10 2,051,953 2 1 3 80,933 3.94%
West Virginia 0 6 737,715 2 1 3 33,256 4.51%
In a way the Presidential election of 1980 was closer than the election of 2012; fully 271 electoral votes were decided by margins less than 8% in contrast to 130 in 2012. Add the Anderson vote to the Carter vote in 1980, and even if Reagan wins the election is no blow-out. Ronald Reagan won by large margins in about half of all states, but by comparatively narrow margins in lots of states. In 2012 Barack Obama and Mitt Romney both won big and lost big in a raft of states.
2. Political polarization between the states would likely abate. Really a corollary of 2. Because of the paucity of polarization between states in 1980 Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter had to run nationwide campaigns to have a chance. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama did not contest Staten Island with a huge number of votes but no relevance to the electoral vote but contested New Hampshire with four electoral votes all season but only about three times as many votes altogether.
3. Areas that vote 'wrong' by the standard of their state (like Orange County and most of the Central Valley in California and most of the large cities and the counties around the Mexican border in Texas) get ignored. If the electoral vote were split in this way (two to the winner of the plurality in a state, the rest split proportionately by the proportion of the popular vote with third-party and independent votes incapable of getting a whole electoral vote by getting a fraction large enough to merit one whole electoral vote ignored, and fractions less than 1% assigned to the winner of the plurality - this would still involve the Electoral College, but it would get different results. We would see this for the four most populous states:
California -- Obama 33, Romney 22
Texas -- Obama 14, Romney 24
Florida -- Obama 16, Romney 13
New York -- Obama 20, Romney 9
................... Obama 83, Romney 67
Reality -- Obama 113, Romney 38
The three states after Texas with the most electoral votes that went for Romney, and Ohio as a sort of balance:
Ohio -- Obama 11, Romney 7
Georgia -- Obama 6, Romney 10
N. Carolina Obama 6, Romney 9
Arizona -- Obama 4, Romney 8
.................. Obama 140, Romney 64
Reality -- Obama 131, Romney 77
San Antonio would matter. Fresno would matter. Such would be better than the laser-focused (and ultimately undemocratic) Presidential campaigns that we now have.
... Could President Obama have won by such rules? He would have adjusted his strategies. He would have had a get-out-the-vote campaign in Texas' big cities and of course the Black Belt of the South. He would have tried to run up the vote in Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City, Louisville, Memphis, and Indianapolis. Give President Obama some credit for having the right style of campaign for the time.
4. States would get hurt for having rules that keep voting numbers down.
5. A travesty like that of 2000 would have required blatant and undeniable election fraud -- like stuffing the ballot boxes.
6. Polarization between the states would likely diminish. Think of all the secession talk related to a President that many Americans despise. People in states that vote against a President would have to confront the fact that there are areas that would not want to secede. Disrespect for political minorities is essential to the tyranny of the majority. Note well that our Constitutional system is intended to prevent the tyranny of a majority.
7. Winning the States and DC would matter. The two at-large electoral votes for all fifty states and DC would altogether account for 102 electoral votes. In 1984, Reagan would have had an insurmountable 88-14 advantage in the Electoral College for winning 44 states alone. In 2012 President Obama would have had only a 54-48 advantage that could in theory have easily been countered.
