Republican pollster Jim Hobart said in an interview that aired Tuesday on “What America’s Thinking” that if the Electoral College were abolished, urban areas would become go-to spots for presidential candidates on the campaign trail.
“I think that you would see more campaigning where the people are,” Hobart, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, told host Jamal Simmons.
“Los Angeles County, largest county in the country, that would become all of a sudden a lot more important than it is now,” he continued, speaking of the California locale.
“I think you would see a lot more rallies in places in California, and New York, and Cook County, Illinois, on the Democratic side, and maybe some of the booming ex-urban counties in Texas on the Republican side,” he said.
“You wouldn’t see these rallies in the Green Bay, Wisconsins, and the Panama City Beaches of the world anymore,” he said, referring to a city in Florida.
A number of Democrats have called for getting rid of the Electoral College following President Trump’s 2016 victory, in which he lost the popular vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton but won the Electoral College.
Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes than Trump in the popular count, but only garnered 232 electoral votes, while Trump got 306.
An NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey released last week found that 53 percent of voters polled said the Electoral College should be done away with in favor of the popular vote system.
— Julia Manchester
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