Trump may repeat Hillary Clinton's fatal Electoral College mistake: analysis

Former President Donald Trump owes his presidency to the Electoral College, which elected him despite Trump losing the popular vote in 2016 because of a narrow win in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But this time, the same dynamic that cost Hillary Clinton that election could be about to hit Trump, Mark Joseph Stern wrote for Slate.

"A refresher: At the Constitutional Convention, Southern delegates opposed direct elections of presidents," wrote Stern. "Although the South contained some of the most populous states, a huge portion of the region’s population was enslaved and disenfranchised; Southerners therefore feared that direct elections would give free states a perennial edge. So Southern delegates demanded a compromise: States would vote for the president, with each state receiving the same number of votes as members of Congress. This solution gave slave states an outsize impact on the presidency, because these states had already secured extra votes in Congress by counting their enslaved residents as three-fifths of a person."

ALSO READ: Dems fear Mike Johnson has laid the groundwork for a nightmare scenario on Jan. 6, 2025

Though slavery was eventually abolished, the Electoral College still functions as a means of prioritizing white voters, a contributor to why voters consistently poll as wanting to end it — and that's where Trump is running into a problem, Stern argued.

Recent polls that show Trump winning largely have something in common: Vice President Kamala Harris is holding steady or even gaining from President Joe Biden with white voters, but Trump is doing better with Black, Latino and Asian voters. Some analysts question whether the polls are capturing a real phenomenon, as some dedicated surveys of these groups find little shift from 2020.

If this shift is happening, it could work against Trump.

For example, Stern explains, Trump gaining with Latino voters could reduce Harris' lead in California, and shore Trump up in Texas and Florida; likewise, gaining with Black voters could win him Mississippi. But it doesn't help in those three core states that secured him the win in 2016, because white voters are of outsized importance there.

"Harris is still favored to win the popular vote, even if she loses the Electoral College," concluded Stern. "In that critical respect, the institution still helps Trump more than it hurts him. If he cannot shore up robust support among white Americans, he will soon learn the limits of nonwhite support in a system designed to devalue their votes."