Your advocacy site is confusing 'city' with 'metropolitan area', probably deliberately. Here's some real stats:
In 2010, the fifty largest metropolitan statistical areas had a population of 166,033,000 -- 53.8% of the United States' 308,745,000 people.
In the 2012 election, Los Angeles County alone had more voters than any of thirty-two of America's fifty states.
Also in the 2012 election, just 150 of America's 3,033 counties - less than five percent of the total, and all attached to a metropolitan area - made up 50% of the vote.
Given a limited amount of time to get in front of the voters, where do you think the candidates are going to go? Do this thing, and the days of candidates getting outside an urban area are pretty much over.
So, disregarding the fact that an MSA includes an urban center and its non-urban surrounds... You're saying that a candidate is going to just pander to every voter in, say, the Indianapolis-Carmel, IN Metropolitan Statistical Area (#35, population 1.7 million) and ignore the rest of Indiana (population 4.8 million).
> Given a limited amount of time to get in front of the voters, where do you think the candidates are going to go? Do this thing, and the days of candidates getting outside an urban area are pretty much over.
I don't really care where they go; re-enfranchising the majority of the country will mean that personal visits by candidates to a handful of geographic areas will be much less important than, for example, their policies. I'm sorry if that sounds like a bad thing to you, I guess we just have to agree to disagree on that.
In 2010, the fifty largest metropolitan statistical areas had a population of 166,033,000 -- 53.8% of the United States' 308,745,000 people.
In the 2012 election, Los Angeles County alone had more voters than any of thirty-two of America's fifty states.
Also in the 2012 election, just 150 of America's 3,033 counties - less than five percent of the total, and all attached to a metropolitan area - made up 50% of the vote.
Given a limited amount of time to get in front of the voters, where do you think the candidates are going to go? Do this thing, and the days of candidates getting outside an urban area are pretty much over.