In response to a post over at One Hand Clapping about electoral vote shifts due to population migration, I commented that I expect President Bush to win in 2004 by a "landslide".
Joel Thomas said that although he thinks a Bush victory is likely, he doesn't think it'll be a landslide; he predicted a 6-10 point win for Bush in the "popular vote".
He may very well be right about that spread, but I wasn't thinking of the "popular vote" -- which I put in quotes because it's not even a real thing. There is no popular vote for President, there are only 50 state-wide elections to select electors, who then cast their votes for President. When I predicted a landslide victory for GWB, I was thinking of the electoral college, where I think he will receive more than 400 votes. I would consider this a landslide, just as Reagan's 1980 victory was a landslide -- 489 electoral votes and wins in 45 states is tremendous, even though he only received 51% of the "popular vote".
The dems do have a strategy - of sorts. Basically, it is to hold the Gore states plus gain one of the close ones (ofcourse they think FL was *really* theirs, so that would be all the really need). I summarized what the WSJ says is the dem strategy in a posting today.
Perceptions can become a type of reality, even when something is not so as a legal matter. The "popular vote" is so engrained in the American psyche that it becomes relevant. If 9/11 hadn't intervened, Bush's failure to obtain the plurality in the 2000 popular vote might have hampered his presidency.
If there were a couple of presidential elections in which the electoral winner lost the popular vote by 10 million votes, there would be tremenedous pressure to amend the Constitution. The likely resistance of the smaller states to such change might not prevail. That would demonstrate that the popular vote is, in some sense, real.
As to landslides, if a Democrat manages to win both California and New York in 2004, "400" might be a difficult number for Bush to attain.
As for the 1980 Carter-Reagan race, if Carter had lost the popular vote by 8-9 points instead of 10, it isn't very likely that Reagan would have achieved over 400 electoral votes, considering how many states were fairly close, such as New York, Massachussetts, Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, South Carolina, etc.
Oh, I agree the popular vote means something to some people, but it's influence is only psychological.
As for amending the Constitution to eliminate the electoral college, it will never happen. It's mathematically impossible. (For the same reason the Senate will never have proportional representation.)