As has been the case for more than 200 years, the outcome of this fall’s US presidential election will be decided by the Electoral College, but most Americans have long supported moving away from that system.
In 2000 and 2016, the winner of the popular vote lost the U.S. presidential election because he or she received fewer electoral votes than their opponent. To continue tracking the public’s views of the U.S. presidential election system, we surveyed 9,720 U.S. adults from August 26 to September 2, 2024.
All survey participants are members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP). The ATP is an online survey panel that is randomly recruited from addresses across the country, ensuring nearly every U.S. adult has a chance of being included. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, political party, education and other categories. More information on the ATP methodology can be found here.
Below are the questions and answers used in this analysis, as well as the methodology.
The Electoral College allocates electors based on the number of senators and representatives each state has in Congress (538 total, including the District of Columbia’s three electors). Most states award all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins that state.
More than six in six Americans (63%) want the winner of the presidential election to be the person who receives the most votes nationwide, and roughly one-third (35%) support keeping the Electoral College system in place, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 9,720 adults conducted Aug. 26-Sept. 2, 2024.
The Electoral College always dominates presidential elections, but a recent (as yet unsuccessful) effort by Nebraska to change the way its electoral votes are apportioned highlights the possibility that a candidate could win the Electoral College by a narrow margin in an extremely close race.
Related: In a presidential tie, Harris and Trump have contrasting strengths and weaknesses
As has been the case for more than two decades, there are sharp partisan differences in attitudes toward the Electoral College.
Eighty-five percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents support replacing the Electoral College with a popular vote system. Republicans and Republican-leaning supporters are split almost evenly, with 53% in favor of keeping the Electoral College and 46% wanting to replace it. Focus on the Electoral College
In 48 states and Washington, D.C., the candidate who receives the most votes in that state is awarded all of that state’s electoral votes.
Nebraska and Maine have taken a different approach, allocating two electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most statewide votes and one vote to the winner of each electoral district. Some Republicans are pushing to change Nebraska’s rules so that the statewide winner receives all five of the state’s electoral votes. This method would likely favor former President Donald Trump, as Nebraska has consistently supported Republican presidential candidates.
To become president, a candidate must receive a majority of 538 votes. If no candidate receives a majority, each state’s representative casts one vote, and the U.S. House of Representatives decides the election results.
Under the current U.S. electoral system, the winner of the popular vote may not receive enough electoral votes to win the presidency.
This happened in the 2000 and 2016 elections. George W. Bush and Donald Trump each won those elections with clear Electoral College victories, but they did not receive the most votes nationwide. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the popular vote by over 7 million, but his Electoral College victory was decided by fewer than 50,000 votes in several swing states. As a result of the Electoral College system, disproportionate attention is focused on the results of a few battleground states. This year, these states include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Shifting partisan views on the Electoral College
Since the 2000 election, more than two-thirds of Democrats have supported moving to a popular vote system.
Republicans remain deeply divided, with 46% in favor of moving to a popular vote system.
Republicans were less supportive of the change after Trump’s victory in 2016. In November of that year, after Trump won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote, only 27% of Republicans supported a popular vote system.
Political parties and ideologies
There are few ideological differences among Democrats on this issue.
87% of liberal Democrats and 74% of conservative and moderate Democrats say they want the president to be chosen by the popular vote.
There are big ideological differences even among Republicans.
Sixty-three percent of conservative Republicans want to keep the current system in place. In contrast, 61% of moderate and liberal Republicans (a much smaller portion of the Republican coalition) say they support popular vote for president.
Majorities of all age groups support changing the system, although adults under 50 are somewhat more in favor than those over 50 (66% vs. 59%).
Note: This is an updated version of posts published in 2021 , 2022 , and 2023 .
A note about question wording
In January 2020, Pew Research Center conducted a survey experiment asking this question in two slightly different ways. One used language we and other organizations have used before, with the reform option asking about “amending the Constitution so that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide wins the election.” The other version asked about “changing the system so that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide wins the election.” The January 2020 survey revealed that there was no substantive difference between asking “amend the Constitution” and “change the system.”
The main reason for conducting this experiment is that reforming how the president is elected does not strictly require a constitutional amendment. For example, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could theoretically accomplish this without a constitutional amendment. Because there was no substantive difference in the survey results from the two question wordings, we adopted the revised wording that refers to a “change in the system.”
