If the Electoral College were replaced with a national popular vote, each person's vote for president would count toward the same nationwide total, rather than being combined state by state to decide electoral votes.
Would the winner necessarily have majority support?
Not necessarily. A majority means more than half of all votes. In a race with several candidates, one person could win more votes than anyone else but still receive less than half. That is called a plurality, not a majority.
For example, if 100 people vote and the candidates receive 40, 35, and 25 votes, the candidate with 40 wins a simple popular-vote election. But 60 voters chose someone else, so the winner did not receive majority support.
Ways to ensure the winner has majority support
- Hold a runoff: If no candidate gets more than 50% in the first election, the top two candidates compete in another election.
- Use ranked-choice voting: Voters rank candidates. If nobody has a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those ballots are reassigned to voters' next choices. This continues until someone has a majority of the continuing votes.
So, a popular vote would make the national vote totals determine the winner, but it would only guarantee majority support if the election system included a method such as a runoff or ranked-choice voting. Also, a majority of votes cast is not necessarily a majority of all eligible voters, since some people may not vote.