After midnight on Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform to make another false claim targeting Democrats.
Trump posted:
"The 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!"
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
People immediately picked up on some issues with Trump’s latest claim.
A September poll by Pew Research Center found 80% of Democrats support abolishing the Electoral College. While 63% overall support its elimination, only 46% of Republicans want to remove the Electoral College as part of the path to the presidency.
In the history of the United States, there have been five Presidents that lost the popular vote, but won the presidency through the Electoral College. The popular vote refers to the overall tally from all eligible voters.
Of those five popular vote losers, four were Republican candidates:
- 1876: Rutherford B. Hayes
- 1888: Benjamin Harrison
- 2000: George W. Bush
- 2016: Donald Trump
In 1824, John Quincy Adams lost the popular vote to Andrew Jackson. But both candidates were members of the same political party—the now defunct Democratic-Republican Party.
If—as Trump's post implies—the Democratic Party sought an advantage in future elections, it behooves them to abolish the Electoral College, not preserve it. But it is to the Republican Party's advantage to maintain electoral votes as a determinant of the presidency.
Trump's latest unsubstantiated claim was widely mocked online.
Trump's Truth Social post also pointed out his propensity to change his opinion based on whatever benefits him most.
Expecting to lose the electoral vote in 2016, Trump called the Electoral College a "disaster for a democracy."
But after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, Trump tweeted:
"The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!"
Trump flip-flopped again after losing his reelection bid against Democratic candidate Joe Biden in 2020.
His attempts to subvert the Electoral College would eventually result in slates of fake electors and the violent assault on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021—the date Congress was slated to certify the electoral vote.
Now that Trump finally won the popular vote on his third try—having lost in both 2016 and 2020—he's baselessly acting as though Democrats are somehow hostile to the popular vote, which flies in the face of all objective reality.
In 2024, Trump became the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years.
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