Can’t remember where I read it but another paper did a similar analysis. They basically said that Clinton got something like 4 million more votes over Trump in just California alone. However, if you completely remove California, and just count the popular vote in the other 49 states, Trump got something like 1.5 million more votes than Clinton. So basically, Clinton’s ‘popular vote’ win is really only due to one state, California. This is another example of why the electoral collage is critical.
I agree. For some reason we seem to stray further and further from the original idea that the US is a union of states and that to be president of the union, you had to be accepted by a majority of the people in all or most of the states. It’s about time some of the states take back some of the rights that are constitutionally theirs.
It’s worse than that. Hillary won by 1. million votes in LA county alone. Assuming she took the popular vote by 2 mil, it sounds like removing 2 US counties from the vote, LA, CA and Cook, IL, would throw it to Trump.
But the real answer to give is that, if popular vote was the goal, campaigning by the candidates, and voter intensity would have been totally different. So it really is an apples/oranges proposition to even talk about the popular vote.