If proportional electoral college voting were in effect in all states,
like it is with Nebraska and Maine, (a) how would this have affected
the 2000 election and (b) how would this affect the 2004 election. 
(Note: Do not wait for final results for 2004; use Bush=254 and
Kerry=252.)

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Clarification of Question by bigalofechopark-ga on 03 Nov 2004 06:42 PST

For this question, assume as well that electors are federally bound. 
That is, they must vote according to their party (Judith A. Best's
proposal).

"There, the district-by-district method, empirically, would not move
much toward proportionality. As Neubauer and Zeitlin report, in the 10
smallest states, "only one elector would have been allocated
differently" in 2000 had these states followed the Maine/Nebraska
model. And because small states tend to be Republican these days, the
end result of a national move toward a district-by-district approach
overall would favor Republicans and hurt Democrats.

Indeed, if every state followed the Maine/Nebraska approach in 2000,
Bush would have beaten Gore in the electoral college by a margin of
289 to 249, which much larger than the margin by which Bush actually
won. This result seems counterintuitive, given that Gore - not Bush --
won the nationwide popular vote. While the move toward more equitable
distribution within each state would seem analytically a step in the
direction of a true nationwide popular election, the counting of
results on a state-by-state basis creates numerical anomalies. "

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/amar/20041015.html

That answers part A.  A brilliant researcher will have to come along
for part B as at this point I think the data will have to be
extrapolated and such.

Nebraska and Maine do not use proportional electoral voting, they use
what is called the Congressional District Method. Each congressional
district in these two states is alloted one electoral vote, with the
remaining votes going to the overall state winner., The candidate
earning the most votes in each distrct gains the electoral votes for
that district.  To date, even with this system in place, the overall
political demographics within these states are so similar that they
have both ended up awarding all of the state's votes to the same
candidate (Nebraska Republican, Maine Democrat).

If Nebraska and Maine used a truly proportional system, their
electoral voting would be quite different.  For example, Nebraska
awarded all 4 of its votes to Bush in the 2000 election, even though
Gore had earned 33.25% of the general vote in the state.  Obviously,
under a proportional system, Gore would have earned at least one of
Nebraska's votes.