I did a game as ("spaced out") Carter where I ran a bit more liberal than he did in OTL, and thus did a bit better in the north and a bit worse in the south, for a narrow electoral college win of 287-251
And that win was with a popular vote loss
A popular vote loss of
19 million,
23.2 percentage points. If all of Lincoln's opponents' votes were combined in the OTL 1860 election, Lincoln would have still won and with a victory around that size in percent, but Carter here does 2 points worse than even Lincoln would have done in that hypothetical scenario
Also
here's a different "spaced out" Carter win, with a decent sized popular vote win of about 5 million votes, and doing strong in the north while losing all of the south except AR, GA, FL, and SC (though all states in the south except GA and AR were very close, within 5 points either way)
Click to see the Electoral College map from my game, and then try it yourself!
www.americanhistoryusa.com
Based Obama gets 0 votes in California
I'm curious which question you used to get that result