Out of the total eligible voting population in 2016, 40.9% did not vote. That amounted to 93.9 million people. They did not have better things to do. They realized that the current presidential selection system either makes their votes irrelevant or makes other people's votes much more significant. The nearly 100 million no-shows were not dumb or lazy or unworthy of voting. They realized that the campaigns made little or no effort to get their vote.
Not Good
In 2016, 136.7 million Americans voted out of an eligible population of 230.9 million. See www.electproject.org/2016g.
Making Media Matter
Commenting about direct election of the president in 1974, political scientist Charles Press wrote that "a most important effect of a straight out popular vote system will be an increased influence of the national media."
If the national media is composed of the news-related cable channels and network television, they have little influence on the presidential elections of this century. Newspapers have even less.
If the national popular vote count determined the president, then more advertising would go to these outlets. In this sense national TV would have increased influence. Currently the networks get almost no presidential campaign ad money. It goes almost entirely to local broadcasters in a few swing states.
A national vote that mattered would cause local newspapers to make more money, potentially a lot more.
But would Fox News and MSNBC have bigger audiences? I doubt it. Would their commentators be more influential? Nope. Would they have editorials? Not likely.
Campaigns would use social media to reach every voter in the country. They would not spend money on broadcast or cable ads in big cities; too expensive. They would pump up ads on local broadcast in all states, local newspapers and radio too.
NYT, WaPo, and WSJ would have to spend more money figuring out what moved voters in every state. They probably would get more subscribers. Local newspapers would surely sell more copies. Interest in local elections would go up. But social media would provide the primary avenue to voters everywhere.
The History of America is the History of Race
The principal reason animating southern state opposition to direct election of the president at the time of the Constitutional Convention was slavery. To protect slavery, the southern state representatives had obtained the compromise that allocated them House seats according to population with slaves counted as three-fifths of a person.
If direct popular vote picked the president, the Three-Fifths gimmick would not have given southern states inequitable advantages in choosing the president.
Slaves of course could not vote, and the northern states had more eligible voters.
Founders from the slave states feared the outcome could be presidents unsympathetic to their "peculiar institution."
So they insisted on the electoral college system. By giving states two electors plus the number equaling the House members, the scheme extended the Three-Fifths Compromise to the process of choosing the president. It wasn't until 1860 that the unsympathetic president at last was elected.
We The People
To make the American democracy work as it should, it is necessary to guarantee that both parties' nominees must seek to pursue the preferences of most people.
Voters Make Great Myth Busters
States don't belong to parties, they belong to people – people who move, people whose lives are affected by changing economies – and the political leanings of the states where they live will continuously evolve as a result.