States like California and Texas literally don ' t matter . Right , but that ' s not set in stone , and states like Virginia , North Carolina , Ohio , Florida , Michigan , Iowa , Minnesota , etc provide a much more diverse and potentially rewarding series of battlegrounds where the factors surrounding voting are manifold and worth engaging with . There could no campaign stops and they would still go blue or red , respectively . Right , now imagine a pure popular vote that unfolds in even more stark contrast than this most recent one imagine those campaign stops are inverted and most existing battleground states are abandoned for the city centers of California , New York and Texas . That ' s the likely outcome of a pure popular vote .