> The popular vote wasn't that far away; it never is, or else the election would have gone the other way. The Electoral College gives extra weight to votes in s

> The popular vote wasn't that far away; it never is, or else the election would have gone the other way. The Electoral College gives extra weight to votes in smaller states, but only so much. Even if there was no difference in weighting, the all-or-nothing nature of the electoral college allows for huge disparities. If half-plus-one of the electoral votes are won in states one by one vote, and all of the other states vote 100% the other way, and there was no distortion or aliasing, we'd see 3/4 of America having voted for the losing candidate. In principle, the "extra weight" allows it to be even worse than that. Of course in practice it will never hit the extreme, but there's plenty of room for "that far away".