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“But lets look at how Trump would have done, he carried 230 districts, plus 30 states ie 60 evs, that’s 290-245. Exactly what he would have gotten had he failed to narrowly win Michigan.

If we use of Auh2’s method of giving 1 electoral vote to the statewide winner and 1 to the winner of the most districts in the state (with statewide as tiebreaker) that would have gained Trump 1 additional vote each from MN (5-3) and VA (6-5) which were carried by Shillery.

292-243

While this distastefully would have gotten Shillery 14 votes closer to winning it would have substantially lowered her chances of getting to 270. Under AuhO’s modified system Trump could have narrowly lost MI, WI, and PA statewide (which in the real world would have given Shillery 278) and lost only 3 votes, still winning with 289 and plenty of room to spare. Lose FL? Still wins at 288! Lose Diaz-Balart’s district in FL? That gives Hillary more districts in the state (GD district map) and thus 2 more votes. But Trump still wins with 286, matching Bush in 2004!

Based on these election results Shillery would have had little chance under this system.”
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I decided to crunch the numbers and see just how much a nationwide adoption of a modified CD method for allocating EVs (one electoral vote per CD carried, plus one EV to the statewide winner and one EV for the winner of the most CDs) would have benefited President Trump in 2016, even had he fared worse in the popular vote.`

Had Donald Trump received 2% less, and Hillary Clinton 2% more, in every single CD and state in America, Trump would have received 43.94% of the national popular vote to Hillary’s 50.03%. Under such scenario, and under our present method of EV allocation (winner-takes-all in all states by ME and NE, and one per CD plus two to the statewide winner in ME and NE), Hillary would have carried MI, PA, WI, FL, AZ, NC and the NE-02 for a whopping 334 electoral votes to only 204 for Trump.

But under the modified CD method of EV allocation, Trump would have managed to win 266 EVs (62 more than under our current system) even had he lost a net 4% of the vote in every single CD and state. That assumes that Trump no longer would have carried AZ-01 (O’Halleran), FL-25 (Díaz-Balart), GA-06 (the CD that Price vacated), IA-01 (Blum), IA-03 (Young), IL-14 (Hultgren), IL-17 (Bustos), MN-02 (Lewis), NE-02 (Bacon), NH-01 (Shea-Poerter), NJ-05 (Gottheimer), NJ-11 (Frelinghuysen), NV-03 (Rosen), NY-18 (Maloney), PA-08 (Fitzpatrick) or VA-08 (Taylor), and would have lost the extra CDs for winning MI, PA, WI, FL, AZ and NC statewide and for winning the most CDs in AZ, FL, MN and VA. However, if that 4% net loss came about by Trump losing 5% in in big cities and close-in suburbs but only losing 3% elsewhere, he would have carried IA-01, IA-03 and VA-02, plus a majority of CDs in VA, then Trump would have received 270 EVs (and thus been elected president) despite losing the national popular vote by over 6%.

With respect to the 2012 presidential elections, Romney would have won 280 EVs (and thus the presidency) under the modified CD allocation method despite losing the national popular vote by 3.86% (and losing by a bit less than 5.4% in the last state that would have put him over the top in the electoral college under the current system).

In conclusion, a modified CD method of EV allocation would be highly beneficial to the GOP should it be adopted nationally. Given that that’s not going to happen, though, individual GOP-controlled states should act in concert to adopt the allocation method in those states where Democrat presidential candidates are competitive statewide but where most CDs vote for the GOP presidential candidate, but only if a large group of such states adopt it.