The state of Virginia became the 18th state to enter the so-called ‘National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC)’, a legal agreement among states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote in presidential elections.
Governor Abigail Spamberger of the Democratic Party signed the bill into law that had her state of Virginia join the compact on Tuesday, 14 April.
The agreement only takes effect if the joined states’ electoral votes combined reach 270. In that case, the national popular vote winner would automatically win the election, as they would secure the majority of 270 out of 538 electoral votes needed to be elected President by the Electoral College.
The 18 states that have signed that agreement thus far are: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and—since this week—Virginia. Along with the District of Columbia, they make up 222 electoral votes.
The measure is evidently pushed by Democratic states, as the Electoral College system favours the party that is stronger in less populated, more rural states, which is the Republican Party of today.
Among these 18 states and Washington DC, Donald Trump only won one electoral vote: Maine’s second district. The state of Maine is one of the only two in the Union that splits its electoral votes among its congressional districts, and awards two for the at-large winner as well (the other being Nebraska).
In order to get the Popular Vote Compact into effect, multiple swing states of today would need to join as well. However, in the Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina state legilsatures, Republicans hold the majority in both chambers; in the Pennsylvania state legislature, Republicans hold the majority in the upper chamber; in Nevada, both chambers are controlled by Democratic majorities, but the state has a Republican governor; and in Michigan, where Dems do hold the trifecta, they only control the State Senate by a single-vote majority.
The US Presidential Elections Where the Popular Vote Winner Did Not Become President
There have been five US presidential elections in which the candidate who lost the popular vote won the Electoral College vote, and thus was elected President.
The first such election was in 1824, when four candidates from the Democratic–Republican Party competed against each other. It is a unique election, given that the eventual winner John Quincy Adams not only did not win the popular vote, but also failed to get the most electoral votes. However, because of the multi-way race, no candidate reached the 131 electoral votes needed for a majority. Adams got 32.74 per cent of the popular vote and 84 electoral votes; while Andrew Jackson won 40.45 per cent of the popular vote and 99 electoral votes.
In such a case, the election is thrown to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation gets one vote. There, Speaker Henry Clay, a staunch opponent of Andrew Jackson, was able to use his influence to get the more closely aligned Adams elected instead. Adams, in turn, picked Clay to be his Secretary of State, in a move that has been dubbed ‘the corrupt bargain’.
The 1876 election was another one-time outlier. Democrat Samuel Tilden won an outright majority of the popular vote, 50.9 per cent. He is the only candidate in a US presidential election to do so but not become President. His opponent, Rutherford B Hayes of the Republican Party, got 47.9 per cent of the popular vote.
This election was marred by massive voter fraud. Three states—Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana—had conflicting vote totals from the two parties. An Electoral Commission made up of Members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices, in an 8–7 vote along party lines, awarded all 19 electoral votes in question to Hayes, which meant he won the Electoral College by a single vote, 185–184, the closest margin in US history.
In 1888, Grover Cleveland of the Democratic Party ran for re-election. He won the popular vote narrowly by 0.8 points (48.6 per cent to 47.8 per cent), but his opponent, the Republican Benjamin Harrison, bested him in the Electoral College, 233–168. Four years later, however, Cleveland came back and defeated Harrison, making him the first President in US history to serve non-consecutive terms.
2000 saw one of the most contested US presidential elections. Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote by 0.5 points. The Electoral College, however, all came down to one state: Florida, with 25 electors. Networks had called Florida for Gore already, only to later be forced to rescind their call. After a machine recount mandated by law after such a tight race, Bush was up by just 327 votes (!) in a state of 16 million people. The two sides battled it out in front of the Supreme Court over partial recounts. Eventually, Bush won the state by around 500 votes, enough to make him the 43rd President of the United States.
Pollsters and pundits gave Donald Trump of the Republican Party no chance in the 2016 election. He, however, ended up defying all odds, and collected 306 electoral votes for himself (of which he only got 304 due to faithless electors). Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party, vying to become the first female POTUS, got 232 electoral votes in the ballot box and 227 after the Electoral College met. However, she did get 48.2 per cent of the popular vote, against President Trump's 46.1 per cent—a decent-sized 2.1-point victory for her as a 'consolation prize'.
This election gave renewed momentum to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact among Democratic-leaning states.
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