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Abolishing the Electoral College has been the white whale of American politics, but the movement to do so may have an unexpected ally in Donald Trump. A late-night Truth Social post by Trump could be a spark to mount a serious effort to remove the Electoral College.
Early on Dec. 9., Trump posted that, "Democrats are fighting hard to get rid of the Popular Vote in future Elections. They want all future Presidential Elections to be based exclusively on the Electoral College!" Notwithstanding the fact that the Electoral College–not the popular vote–has always determined who wins the presidency, Democrats have overwhelmingly supported choosing the president through a national popular vote over the Electoral College. Opponents of the Electoral College would be wise to take Trump up on his post and push for its elimination with his support.
This is not the first time Trump has suggested his preference for a popular vote over the Electoral College system. On the day of the 2012 election, he tweeted that, "The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy," and, "This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!" He then encouraged others to, "Fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us."
Four years later Trump joined the ranks of five other "misfire" presidents who lost the popular vote, but were able to triumph in the Electoral College. Since then, he has sent mixed messages, both praising the Electoral College and claiming that he would prefer a national popular vote over the current system. He reportedly discussed the possibility of abolishing the Electoral College in a meeting with congressional leaders shortly after taking office, but was shut down from doing so by Mitch McConnell.
More than 1 in 10 presidential elections have ended in misfires and we almost had another in 2024. Trump's post likely is due to the fact that Kamala Harris came within a whisker of winning the presidency through a misfire. Had less than 1 percent of voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan changed their minds and voted for Harris, she would have won exactly 270 electoral votes and the presidency. Had that happened, Trump would have been the first and loudest to call for the end of the Electoral College.
Americans have consistently supported using the national popular vote over the Electoral College. Recent polls by Gallup and Pew show between 58 percent and 63 percent of Americans would prefer to choose presidents through a popular vote rather than the Electoral College. Surprisingly, the Pew Poll finds that nearly half of Republicans (46 percent) favor the popular vote and it is not difficult to imagine that number climbing if Trump were to advocate for it himself.
In spite of Trump's claim that Democrats would prefer to focus exclusively on the Electoral College, most have ardently supported moving to a popular vote for decades. These calls crescendoed after the misfire elections of 2000 and 2016 where the Democratic ticket won the national popular vote, but lost in the Electoral College. After those contests, among Democrats, 73 percent in 2000 and 84 percent in 2016 favored moving to a national popular vote.
Currently, neither party is particularly advantaged or disadvantaged by the Electoral College, making this moment an opportune time for those favoring the popular vote to make a strong push to ditch the institution. There is a long history supporting efforts to do so as no other feature of the Constitution has had more attempts to amend or abolish it than the Electoral College.
Of the hundreds of attempts to abolish the institution, none came closer than the effort in the wake of the 1968 election. A proposal to amend the Constitution in favor of a popular vote overwhelmingly passed in the House of Representatives 338 to 70 but was killed by a filibuster in the Senate in spite of reportedly strong support in the chamber and in the states.
Trump's changes of heart about the Electoral College and the popular vote are not unique. Electoral outcomes determine one's views of the Electoral College as much as any purported values one holds associated with the institution. When the outcome is what you want, it is praised; when it is not, calls for change emerge.
In Federalist 68, Alexander Hamilton claimed that [if] the manner of selecting the president "be not perfect, it is at least excellent." Most Americans would take issue with Hamilton's assessment as the institution has been a target for change throughout the course of American history. Although hard to imagine, Donald Trump just might be able to put the United States on a course to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote. Doing so would be a herculean effort that has been over 200 years in the making.
Robert Alexander is a professor of political science at Bowling Green State University.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
