It didn't really know where to post this. Didn't seem like r/politics was a place for questions and I couldn't think of any other place, maybe r/NoStupidQuestions or r/explainlikeimfive so I am asking here.
It being election season it's got me thinking about the drawbacks of the electoral college and thinking of alternatives. One being the Popular Vote others being the Alternative Vote/Ranked Choice voting. The biggest drawback that I've seen about the electoral college is that it polarizes the voter base because you have to pick a side not the best candidate. You get the spoiler effect having to pick the lesser of two evils, with enough election cycles each side drifts further and further away from center. Another drawback is that states with fewer populations have larger representation in congress than a state with a large population. Where instead of majority rule it is essentially minority rule.
For the Popular Vote the biggest criticism that I often hear is an anecdote, that you don't want to have the cities and urban populations outweighing the rural populations. Which is a valid concern yet still an anecdote. My question focuses on this anecdote.
Has anyone actually compiled the data to verify if this was true?
A YouTube video from CGP Grey about the Electoral College says that this is mathematically impossible. He listed the populations of the nations top 100 cities by population and how even if they all voted AND all voted for one party it would still only be like 21% of the population of the US. What if we drill down even further? Has anyone used the US Census data and like the top 1000 cities by population and actually studied how those top 1000 cities voted in past elections? I think if there was a study like that it would largely prove or disprove the anecdote.
EDIT: Perhaps I didn't explain this well enough. I'm not looking to debate the pros and cons of the EC or Popular Vote.
Has anyone ever critiqued and scrutinized the anecdote against the popular vote. That if we had the popular vote, it would wash out the rural vote.
Popular Vote and Electoral College Question and Criticisms
byu/HucknRoll ingeopolitics
Posted by HucknRoll
3 comments
> For the Popular Vote the biggest criticism that I often hear is an anecdote, that **you don’t want to have the cities and urban populations outweighing the rural populations.** **Which is a valid concern** yet still an anecdote. My question focuses on this anecdote.
Why is that even a “criticism” and how is that a “valid” concern???
For democracy to work, you gotta let the majority rule with some checks/balances.
> It being election season it’s got me thinking about the drawbacks of the electoral college and thinking of alternatives. One being the Popular Vote others being the Alternative Vote/Ranked Choice voting. The biggest drawback that I’ve seen about the electoral college is that it polarizes the voter base because you have to pick a side not the best candidate.
The electoral college is the outcome of winning the vote, it is not (directly) related to ranked ballots or other forms of determining who wins the election in a state.
You’re mixing different election related topics and talking about them as if they’re alternative options for each other.
The first concept is that the US for the most part has a first past the post election outcome. The party with the most votes win the state, and with it the electoral college votes that is assigned to the state (with a small number of exceptions). This is the concept that systematically drives elections to a two-party system, because people need to vote for a party that has the best chance to win.
Alternatives to that is proportional representation, ranked ballots, or runoffs once the votes are counted and there is no clear winner, or a number of other options.
I’m not getting into the pros & cons of the electoral college, while it has it’s limitations, it is 100% set in stone. The republican states will never vote in favor of a constitutional amendment that would remove it, it is the only thing that keeps them politically viable.
[This](https://new.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1fvb7dj/45_of_us_counties_contain_50_of_the_population/) recent post at r/mapporn looked at the county level to see where half of the US population lives. It said that the most populous 142 counties are equal in population to the other 3,001, based on the 2020 census. As for the population of cities, the [US census estimates](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-total-cities-and-towns.html) in 2023 there were 333 incorporated places with a population of at least 100,000 people. City 1,000 is DeKalb city, Illinois with a population of 40,211 and city 1,001 is Peachtree city, Georgia, with a population of 40,193.
What is remarkable though is that there are really no Republican cities, or to specify this more accurately, areas with a population density higher than about 900 people per square mile tend to vote Democrat and below that density Republican and this correlation becomes stronger the further away from this density one moves ([Wilkinson, 2019](https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-density-divide-urbanization-polarization-and-populist-backlash/)).
Rural places in America have been voting Republican in increasingly larger shares over the last few decades though ([Jacobs & Shea, 2023](https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-rural-voter/9780231211581)), in part due to rural resentment ([Cramer, 2016](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo22879533.html)).