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I think this misunderstands how states that allocate EC votes proportionally work. They are not allocated proportionally according to the popular vote of the state. Rather, the states allocate one vote for the overall state winner and then one vote for the winner of each Congressional district. A description here. So the vote-getting is still winner-take-all at the level the voting is occurring at. Presumably whoever won NE-2 would get both votes, same as ME-2.
Huh... why do they explicitly mention "president and vice-president who were political opponents, constantly acting at cross-purposes" in the wiki, then?
The Results section of the 1796 election article has some details. The short version is that parties failed to unite around VP candidates. If Pinckney had won every VP vote for the Federalist party he would have beaten Jefferson easily. Part of it seems to be they tried what I mentioned in my last sentence, coordinating so that the President ended up with fewer ECs than the VP, but too many people voted for other candidates. Note that the 1800 election didn't have this problem, and by 1804 we had the 12th amendment.
Important to note that, then as now, electors formally cast their ballots at their respective state capitals. Without mass communication there was no reliable way to coordinate. If all federalists defect and vote for Jefferson and Burr, the tie gets broken in the House, where the Federalists could swing the election to Burr. If some Democrats honestly defect so Jefferson is ahead of Burr, there's the risk that poor coordination puts Adams ahead of Burr. And who's to say that, right now, there aren't Federalists defecting to Burr so he's ahead of Jefferson?
The College was so chaotic that it could have very quickly ended the Republic.
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