No, actually if all states had used the Maine/Nebraska system of allocating electors, Bush would have won both the 2000 and 2004 elections with an even larger margin in the EC:
cf. http://www.martin.uky.edu/~web/programs/mpa/Capstones_2005/Rinehart.pdf
(It’s a student paper that ran the numbers for both the Maine/Nebraska system and a system in which each state’s EC votes are divided proportionally according to the vote within the state, which system would also have given Bush a more comfortable margin of victory.)
The winner-take-all system is actually a nearly pessimal system for implementing the Founders intent that the EC provide more weight to rural America in the selection of a President, and the heavy weighting it gives to urban voters in urban states favors the left.
Great, I go through all that trouble, and you post a paper with the same conclusion just a few minutes before I hit “post.” : )
Actually, it seems that the author missed a few districts in 2004, since the EVs added up to 507 instead of 535.
Thank You for that.
I’m older now, and certainly not willing to do the legwork for making my own case concerning the Electoral College vote.
One of the many reasons that I enjoy posting out here is that someone such as yourself will have facts for me that I cannot readily obtain.