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Comment by daveFNbuck | Hacker News Reader

They'll spend more time campaigning in the areas with the most people who can be convinced to change their votes. This isn't necessarily going to be the highest population areas, as those areas tend to be solidly liberal.

I don't know why the electoral college would be better at identifying high need areas than willingness to change your vote. Shouldn't people who need help be more likely to change their vote than to live in a purple state?

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This isn't necessarily true.

If a 10m pop area has a 70-30 split, it's still better to campaign there than a 5m pop area with a 50-50 split. In absolute numbers it's still 3 million supporters versus 2.5 million supporters.

My point is that you want to go to places where you can convince the most people to vote for you, not necessarily the places with the most people. This means you'll want to go to places with lots of undecided voters, supporters who need to be convinced to vote, and non-supporters who you think can be swayed to your side. You also want to avoid places with lots of people who will be energized by your visit to vote against you.

Under your model where the goal of the campaign is to visit your supporters, you'll favor smaller cities that strongly support you over larger cities that support your opponent. A place with 5 million population that's 70-30 in your favor has 3.5 million supporters.

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