Nobody serious would advocate for abolishing the electoral college.
Why? The electoral college is Affirmative action for states that couldn't attract a lot of people to them.
The United States created a system meant to get equal representation and making the voted of rural America not count wouldn't accomplish that.
The rural vote still counts; 19% of Americans live in rural areas (29% live in urban areas). The majority lives in the suburbs, which are persuadable.
The primaries help with representation a bit because then democrats in red areas and Republicans in blue areas can make sure the presidential candidate they help get elected will have their interests in mind
The primaries make politicians initially appeal only to their base if they want to win. Realistically, the person that spends the most amount on the primary almost always wins due to name recognition. But primaries shouldn't exist because they only give voters 2 options; voters should have many options, all listed on a website stating the candidate's main policies that they would want if they got elected, and rank choice voting is used if no candidate gets 50%.
but electing a presidential candidate that can literally only tour big cities and ignore the needs of rural areas isn't going to be fair.
Democrats AND republicans pretty much only tour big and small cities (defined as at least 20,000 people); that's where most of the people are; people from rural areas that want to go to a rally can go anytime they want. And due to television, rural Americans can see what politicians advocate for and either like it or don't. They can send an email to a politician's campaign. If Trump wanted to make rural America better, he would do town halls, where voters ask him a question and he responds honestly. He does rallies (and I don't have an issue with this) and he could advocate a lot of things and his base loves him so much to where they would eat it up. Trump could say something like, "Don't get me started on Woke Big Tech. Woke Big Tech has too much power over our free speech; they are too big! Tax woke big Tech and these globalist Silicon Valley oligarchs and use the money to fund healthcare for the American Patriots! Copy ISRAEL; fund healthcare for American Patriots and COPY then on abortion; we are with the beloved nation of ISRAEL on abortion!" and his base would eat it up (even though he advocated for Universal healthcare and legalized abortion). If Bernie Sanders does the same thing, the GOP hates him for it. If Trump does it, they all love him, provided he uses right wing ethos already established to make his point and the base eats it up not realizing they agreed with Bernie Sanders (who IS Jewish, just like Israel is). Israel compared to Palestine is a very leftist country on LGBT, abortion, and Medicare for all. When the right gave up on the homosexuality debate temporarily, they praised Israel for being pro LGBT and not Palestine/Arabs. If the right wing matrix wanted to concede the abortion debate as well, they could point to how ISRAEL is leading the way on western values/leftist values in the middle east by legalizing abortion; the matrix could promote women that got abortions that are big supporters of Israel and western civilization and "building the wall" and even though the GOP believes they committed murder right now, they would eat that coverage up. They don't even have to regret their abortion; Arielle Scarcella isn't ashamed to be lesbian; she wears that on her sleeve and she touts other right wing talking points that make the GOP base not care that she is a lesbian (even though 10 years ago, they were claiming LGBT people were going to hell). If you say your one left wing thing and a bunch of right wing things and you look good while doing it, the right doesn't care because they don't have principles; they just follow the vibes.
Besides that there are pragmatic challenges in close elections as well. A close election nationwide would require a ridiculous nationwide recount, while an electoral system can limit the recounts and other nightmares to an isolated area.
Recounts are easy to do; machines do them.
If republicans ever support a popular vote than they are either evil or stupid
Is it just because you want the GOP to win elections? What party benefits SHOULDN'T MATTER!
If there are no primaries and it's just one general election of 20 or so candidates with their top stances on a government website, it would be virtually impossible to win without appealing to people who aren't your #1, #2, or even #3 voters. We may get someone like Rand Paul or Andrew Yang instead of Trump or Biden.