A growing number of Republican voters want presidential elections decided by popular vote rather than the electoral college system, according to a poll, even though that would have favored Democratic candidates in recent history.
A Pew Research Center survey found that nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (65 percent) say the way the president is elected should be based on who receives the most votes overall nationally, with 33 percent believing it should remain as who wins the electoral college count.
The poll also shows that just over half of Republican voters (52 percent) want to keep the electoral college system. However, the amount of GOP voters who want to switch to the popular vote currently stands at 47 percent, and has been increasing steadily for years.
In a November 2016 poll, taken just days after Donald Trump won the election but lost the popular vote to Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, just 27 percent of Republicans wanted to switch to a popular vote to decide presidential races. This number increased to 37 percent in 2021 and 42 percent in 2022.
Since the start of the 21st century, no Republican candidate except George W. Bush in 2004 has won the popular vote.
Bush, just like Trump in 2016, won the electoral count in 2000 but lost the popular vote to Al Gore. Bill Clinton won the popular as well as the electoral count in both the 1992 and 1996 elections, meaning just one of the last eight popular votes has been won by a Republican candidate.
Prior to Bush's 2000 election victory, there had only been three occasions where the winner of the electoral college system lost the popular vote, with the last one occurring in 1888 when Republican Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote to Democratic President Grover Cleveland, but won the electoral count by 233-168.
The two instances in recent history of an electoral college system-winning candidate losing the popular vote suggests that the occurrence could become more frequent in future elections, with the American public seemingly supporting a change in deciding how presidents are elected.
However, changing the system does not necessarily mean a guaranteed advantage for the Democratic Party.
In a July opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, senior editor David Lauter suggested that the results of the 2022 midterms—in which the Democrats lost votes in the normally strong blue states of California and New York—suggest that there is a possibility the party may lose the popular votes at a future presidential election while still winning the electoral college vote.
"Republicans ate into the Democratic margins in California and New York, and in the aggregate, their candidates for the House got more votes. But Democrats swept the field in statewide races in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania and won Senate races in Nevada, Georgia and New Hampshire," Lauter wrote.
"If those results had occurred in a presidential race, Democrats would have lost the popular vote but won the electoral college vote."
When broken down further, the Pew Research Center survey reveals that 63 percent of conservative Republicans would prefer keeping the current system, whereas the same proportion of more moderate Republican voters want to switch to the popular vote.
Those who consider themselves "highly politically engaged" Republicans still overwhelmingly favor keeping the electoral college by a margin of 72 percent, with 27 percent supporting a move to a popular vote system.
"Republicans with a moderate level of engagement are more divided, with 51 percent wanting to keep the system as is and 48 percent wanting to change it," Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research at Pew Research Center, wrote in an analysis of the poll results.
"And a clear majority of Republicans with lower levels of political engagement (70 percent) back moving to a popular vote."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
