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Quick electoral college thread: Went back to the oldest Polsby & Wildavsky Presidential Elections I own - 4th ed., 1976 to see their case for the EC. It's *badly* dated.
They argue mainly that the EC has tended to empower big cities and the diverse populations in large states. That's good, for them, because...
...it balanced off how the Senate (and pre-Baker v. Carr, the House) were biased in favor of one-party states, which tended to be either all-Anglo or ruled by all-Anglo parties.
That's essentially gone now.
That's essentially gone now.
The EC in the 21st century is *heavily* biased against cities. Once again: Only one of the top 10 cities has been in a competitive state recently, vs. 8 of the top 8 in 1952.
A second argument for the EC is that it tends to turn pluralities produce solid-looking majorities. That worked in 1960 and 1968. But lately that's been a total disaster, with 2000 and 2016 producing splits. In 2004 the EC turned a solid win into a nailbiter.
It is still probably the case that the EC tends to empower a somewhat different set of states (close party balance; P&W would say close and big) than the House or the Senate. But so might direct election of the president.
At any rate, I think it's fair to say that the standard political science case for the electoral college - which was hardly the consensus position then - is a lot weaker than it was forty years ago.
