Presidential elections with proportional allocation

The electoral college is getting a lot of flack lately for being why Trump won the election. It occurred to me that the EC, as it is popularly understood, has two effects. One weights smaller states more than larger ones, which was just a pragmatic political compromise from the 1780s. But the other is winner-take-all, which is a choice the state governments make. They could give their electoral votes literally any way they want, including rolling a D20 and picking people out of the jury pool.

I decided to strip out the winner-take-all and see what would have happened if all the states used proportional allocation while retaining the constitutional weighting process. The results for the last seven elections:

Clinton: 236

Bush: 197

Perot: 105

Clinton: 267

Dole: 224

Perot: 46

Nader: 1 (California)

Bush: 263

Gore: 262

Nader: 13

Bush: 280

Kerry: 258

Obama: 289

McCain: 248

Nader: 1 (California)

Obama: 276

Romney: 261

Johnson: 1 (California)

Trump: 262
Hillary: 260
Johnson: 14
Stein: 1 (California)
McMullin: 1 (Utah)

Interestingly, four of the seven end up without a majority winner, and the others ('04, '08, '12) have very close margins. This shows that the winner-take-all effect is just as important as the constitutionally-mandated weighting effect.

In 2016, Trump still comes out on top due to the weighting, but with proportional allocation it's almost a tie, and nobody has a majority with 270. The numbers are strikingly close to 2000, actually, the last time there was a popular/electoral split.

Normally that would mean the election goes to the House, but I don't think that's what actually happens in these scenarios. The third-party electors, knowing their candidates can't possibly win, would likely throw their votes to either of the leading candidates. This would likely happen after extracting concessions of some kind, like promises of legislative priorities, or even a different VP. We could end up with a Hillary/Johnson administration, or a Kaine/Pence, or literally anything the electors could compromise on. It looks very much like a parliamentary system.

Suddenly third party votes are something besides a not-vote!

At a glance, I rather like the shape of this system. I've got no problem with weighting rural areas more than urban areas. I just have a problem with making votes not matter at all. And that's not the result of electoral college as a concept, it's entirely a state-level choice.

[Also, side note, Maine and Nebraska use some bizarre hybrid system. Two EVs to the state winner, and one to the winner of each congressional district. So you could imagine proportional for the entire state, or just proportional for the at-large votes.

In 2016, Maine went 3:1 Hillary, but goes 2:2 under either proportional plan. Nebraska went 5:0 Trump, but goes 4:1 under proportional at-large, and 3:2 under straight proportional. So the gerrymandering of the districts to favor Republicans in Nebraska keeps having an effect if we still go by congressional districts. Screw gerrymandering.]

In summary, the problems with the electoral college aren't with the electoral college. Your beef is with your state legislature, as it often is.