There’s evidence in recent history of general election campaigns that the Electoral College is not balancing the interests of big states and small states, or urban and rural areas.

A National Popular Vote will make that problem worse, not better. Note that on your map, the candidates visited 26 States.

The demographic considerations are addressed more directly in this video, Myths About Big Cities.

His numbers mean little, if anything. He’s using the census total population numbers from 2010 in that video. It’s 2017 . Demographics have shifted since then. More people have moved from rural areas to urban areas.

I wasn’t content to stick to the video’s argument and did some calculations of my own. There are a total of 382 metropolitan statistical areas recognized by the United States Office of Budget Management. If a candidate wants to reach 85% of the voting population, they need to campaign in all of these areas.

Why would a candidate care about reaching 85% of those people? A candidate doesn’t need 85% to win under a NPV. They don’t need anywhere close to it.

To begin with, they aren’t 85% of the voting population. That’s 85% of the TOTAL population.

What matters is voting eligible population (VEP), not total population. That’s people that are over age 18 who are U.S. citizens and don’t have any disqualifying issues (i.e. in prison, felony convictions, etc…).

The total U.S. VEP in 2016 was 230,593,103 people.

As you mention, there are arguments that the EC may cause a decrease in voter participation. For 2016 the national voter turnout rate was 60.2%. So let’s just assume that a NPV could get that up to 75% nationally. That’d be a pretty sizeable jump.

So if 230,595,103 and eligible to vote and 75% of them actually turn out. That’s 172,944,828 people actually casting a ballot.

A candidate would need to get 50% + 1 of them to vote for them. That’s 86,472,414 +1 or 86,472,415 votes.

If that candidate thinks their platform could draw 55% of the voters in a few select States, how many States would they need?

86.472,415 is 55% of 157,000,000 voters. That’s the magic number.

If that candidate were running and spent all of their time in the 17 most populated States they’d be entertaining 160,769,805 voters. That’s 2+ million more than they need. In just 17 States. (NOTE: Trump managed to pull better than 55% in 19 States in this past election and Clinton got 55%+ in 9 other States so a 55% target isn’t unrealistic at all.)

If they think their platform is strong enough to draw 65% of the votes they only need to worry about the 12 most populous States.

When States are ranked by population, New Mexico comes in at #35. Do you think they’d visit you? If that candidate can pull 55% of the votes in just 17 States they don’t need New Mexico. They don’t even get close to needing New Mexico. Remember when I mentioned taking note of the 26 States on your map above? How would that compare to 17 States? Or 12?

The other long standing issue with the NPVIC is the issue of recounts. The folks that promote it tend to poo-poo that idea that recounts would ever be needed but that seems pretty short-sighted.

What happens if/when your preferred candidate loses the NPV by… 100,000 votes nationally? There is no national recount process. Some States have automatic recount triggers if their final tallies are within 1% but it is entirely possible that the NPV tally could be within a 100,000 votes and not trigger any State level 1% automatic recounts. In fact that MORE likely to happen with a NPV. Each candidate would have to ask for (and pay for) recounts on their own and then we have Bush v. Gore style recounts on a national level only under a NPV, every State would have their own rules for how recounts would be done. And in some of them, it would still be up to each voting district on how recounts are accomplished. Instead of a couple dozen different recount standards like with had in Florida in 2000, we’d have hundreds (if not thousands) of recounting processes and standards. (The people promoting the NPVIC admit that there are no national standards and suggest that the Federal government should pass laws to address that, but they don’t actually require any of the States that sign onto the Contract to agree to change their recount processes to attempt to fix this problem themselves.)

A NPV doesn’t solve the issue of candidates ignoring States during their campaigns at all.