Majority of Americans disfavor the Electoral College

[Occam's Banana]

Majority of Americans continue to favor moving away from Electoral College
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-r...-to-favor-moving-away-from-electoral-college/
{Jocelyn Kiley | 25 September 2023}

How we did this:

In 2000 and 2016, the winners of the popular vote lost their bids for U.S. president after receiving fewer Electoral College votes than their opponents. To continue tracking how the public views the U.S. system for presidential elections, we surveyed 8,480 U.S. adults from July 10 to 16, 2023.

Everyone who took part in the current survey is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.
​

The Electoral College has played an outsize role in some recent U.S. elections. And a majority of Americans would welcome a change to the way presidents are elected, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (65%) say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency. A third favor keeping the current Electoral College system.

Public opinion on this question is essentially unchanged from last year, though Americans’ support for using the popular vote to decide the presidency remains higher than it was a few years ago.

The current electoral system in the United States allows for the possibility that the winner of the popular vote may not secure enough Electoral College votes to win the presidency. This occurred in both the 2000 and 2016 elections, which were won by George W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively.

Partisan views over time

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are far more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to support moving to a popular vote system for presidential elections (82% vs. 47%).

The share of Democrats saying this is nearly identical to last year but higher than in January 2021, a few weeks before President Joe Biden was sworn into office after winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

Republicans are fairly divided on this question: 52% support keeping the current Electoral College system, and 47% support moving to a popular vote system. GOP support for moving to a popular vote is the highest it’s been in recent years – up from 37% in 2021 and just 27% in the days following the 2016 election.

Party and ideology

Nearly nine-in-ten liberal Democrats (88%) and about three-quarters of conservative and moderate Democrats (77%) say they would prefer presidents to be elected based on the popular vote.

Ideological differences are wider among Republicans. A clear majority – 63% – of conservative Republicans prefer keeping the current system, while 36% would change it.

The balance of opinion reverses among moderate and liberal Republicans (who make up a much smaller share of the Republican coalition). A majority of moderate and liberal Republicans (63%) say they would back the country moving to a popular vote for president.

Age

Younger adults are somewhat more supportive of changing the system than older adults. About seven-in-ten Americans under 50 (69%) support this. That share drops to about six-in-ten (58%) among those 65 and older.

Political engagement

Political engagement – being interested in and paying attention to politics – is associated with views about the Electoral College, particularly among Republicans.

Highly politically engaged Republicans overwhelmingly favor keeping the Electoral College: 72% say this, while 27% support moving to a popular vote system.

Republicans with a moderate level of engagement are more divided, with 51% wanting to keep the system as is and 48% wanting to change it. And a clear majority of Republicans with lower levels of political engagement (70%) back moving to a popular vote.

Differences by engagement are much less pronounced among Democrats. About eight-in-ten Democrats with low (78%) and medium (82%) levels of engagement favor changing the system, as do 86% of highly engaged Democrats.

Note: This is an update of posts previously published on Jan. 27, 2021 (written by Bradley Jones, a former senior researcher), and Aug. 5, 2022 (written by Jocelyn Kiley and Rebecca Salzer, a former intern). Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

A note on question wording:

In January 2020, Pew Research Center ran a survey experiment that asked this question in two slightly different ways. One used the language that we and other organizations had used in prior years, with the reform option asking about “amending the Constitution so the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide wins the election.” The other version asked about “changing the system so the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide wins the election.” The January 2020 survey revealed no substantive differences between asking about “amending the Constitution” and “changing the system.”

We conducted this experiment in large part because reforming the way presidents are selected does not technically require amending the Constitution. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, for example, could theoretically accomplish it without a constitutional amendment. Since there was no substantive difference in the survey results between the two question wordings, we have adopted the revised wording.
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Explore Americans’ views of the political system

This article draws from our major report on Americans’ attitudes about the political system and political representation, conducted July 10-16, 2023. For more, explore:

• The report chapter on Americans’ views of proposed changes to the political system
• The full report

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[Snowball]

Why even have states anymore?

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

I guess it's a fluent transition from when only a select group of people were allowed to vote, which opened up to more and more people having a vote and it being a more and more equal playing field. If that's a good thing is an open question, which many may have an answer to. As far as I know the number of electoral votes is based on the number of congressmen +2 ? If that's the case there's a slight favour towards smaller states, which one can argue about. I would personally say that's a good thing as they're also likely less politically connected, so giving them a slightly higher influence here would be a natural balancing factor. But purely speaking it's a weird idea.

 

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1706672033650667795
to: https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1706673530153078975
[thread archive: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1706672033650667795.html]
{Auron MacIntyre | 26 September 2023}

Conservatives love to say “We’re not a democracy we’re a constitutional republic” but of course that’s not really true and it gets less true by the day.

When the will of the people is your legitimating mechanism mass democratization will slowly consume everything.

[... snip tweets repeating some results of the survey referenced in the OP ...]​

The dialectical energy always moves in the direction of removing restrictions and expanding benefits.

There’s always a political incentive to expand the franchise and remove barriers to the popular will.

Conservatives think that allowing illegal immigrants to vote or removing the electoral college are ridiculous proposals, but they have no real argument against them because they’ve already bought into the logic of mass democracy.

The US has vastly expanded the franchise, removed the fundamental differentiation from their two legislative houses by mandating the direct election of senators, and altered the election of presidential candidates through the primary process.

The electoral college will inevitably fall because it can’t withstand the universal acid of popular will, which conservatives have completely bought in to.

Illegals will inevitably receive amnesty and the franchise will be extended to them because conservatives have already bought into the idea that hat mass participation in government is the essence of America, it would contradict their own ideology to deny it.

Democracy will inevitably consume itself because it has to.

Once you embrace the tenets of mass democracy there’s no real argument against letting it destroy any limiting institutions.

https://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/the-dark-enlightenment-by-nick-land/

​

Conservatives are in bad spot because their goals and their ideology do not align, and they have been told that looking outside that ideology a betrayal of their values.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

//

 

[Anti Federalist]

Separate or Die.

 

[Anti Federalist]

In 15 years the children of the tens of millions invaders currently conquering our nation will start voting...and that, as they say, will be that.

In Europe the exact same thing is happening.

Our, meaning us people, right here, right now, stupidity, sloth and poltroonery will end up dooming white, western, Christian civilization, possibly forever.

Any of our posterity that is left will despise us.

 

[Anti Federalist]

Differences by engagement are much less pronounced among Democrats. About eight-in-ten Democrats with low (78%) and medium (82%) levels of engagement favor changing the system, as do 86% of highly engaged Democrats.

The wretched refuse of a hundred teeming city and urban landscapes across the country love this idea.

 

[Snowball]

Separate or Die.

RUSSIA.

 

[Anti Globalist]

Good luck ever having a Republican president again if the Electoral College were to be abolished.

 

[oyarde]

I disfavor the majority of americans who are just commie dicksuckers

 

[Voluntarist]

Good luck ever having a Republican president again if the Electoral College were to be abolished.

Had the Electoral College been abolished when you wrote that post, we'd still have had a Republican president less than sixteen months later. In a two party system, the winning party considers itself to have "a mandate" on ALL of the platform planks it ran on (even though the majority of the voting public does not agree with their most radical platform planks). Majority parties tend to overdo it on those "lesser planks", thus seeming crazier and crazier to those voters in the "vanilla middle". They eventually get out of touch with that "vanilla middle" and lose their votes.

Unfortunately, unbridled liberty is one of those platform planks that the "vanilla middle" does not embrace. They have to be convinced.

 

[Voluntarist]

We conducted this experiment in large part because reforming the way presidents are selected does not technically require amending the Constitution. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, for example, could theoretically accomplish it without a constitutional amendment. Since there was no substantive difference in the survey results between the two question wordings, we have adopted the revised wording.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has now been approved in seventeen states and the District of Columbia (to be implemented once the approving states possess 270 Electoral Votes). Everyone of those 18 jurisdictions voted for Harris in the 2024 election. Virginia, New Hampshire and Nebraska are the only states with electoral votes for Harris that haven't endorsed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I've been pointing out to the adherents of the Compact that if the Compact was approved and in place, then all of their votes in 2024 would have been for Donald Trump. The electoral vote would have been 520 (Trump) to 18 (Harris). That doesn't tend to sit well with them.

 

[unknown]

Majority of Americans are as dumb AF.

 

[TheTexan]

Majority of Americans are as dumb AF.

I resemble that remark

 

[unknown]

I resemble that remark

I'm extremely dumbfounded.

 

[TheTexan]

In 15 years the children of the tens of millions invaders currently conquering our nation will start voting...and that, as they say, will be that.

In Europe the exact same thing is happening.

Our, meaning us people, right here, right now, stupidity, sloth and poltroonery will end up dooming white, western, Christian civilization, possibly forever.

Any of our posterity that is left will despise us.

Poltroonery is a good word

 

[Occam's Banana]

I've been pointing out to the adherents of the Compact that if the Compact was approved and in place, then all of their votes in 2024 would have been for Donald Trump. The electoral vote would have been 520 (Trump) to 18 (Harris). That doesn't tend to sit well with them.