Math is never simple in American politics. I would not be surprised at all to see Romney win the popular vote on election day, but see Obama win the electoral victory by winning the really big states by narrow margins. It’s never discussed, but if you have the right states, you can win with 11 and lose the other 39.
True, but Texas is one of the biggest, and Republicans count on getting that one.And as far as the bias of the Electoral College wrt the popular vote goes, that bias is the two additional EV for the two senators. You would get 12 EV for winning a state with 10 CDs, but you would get twenty EV for winning 5 states totaling 10 CDs.
As you say, tho, it also depends on your margin of victory in the states you win. If you lose a state, it doesn’t matter that you got 49% of the vote . . .The upshot is that the campaigns naturally focus on the states which might tip by a narrow margin. But as I implied, you’d far rather tip 5 little states than one larger one with the same number of CDs.