Advertisement

Trump thinks the Electoral College is ‘genius.’ He said the opposite 4 years ago.

The art of the flip-flop.

Trump decried the Electoral College following Obama’s 2012 victory over Mitt Romney. But he’s changed his tune now that it allowed him to become president-elect. CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Trump decried the Electoral College following Obama’s 2012 victory over Mitt Romney. But he’s changed his tune now that it allowed him to become president-elect. CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Donald Trump will lose the popular vote by a margin likely to exceed one million. But thanks to the Electoral College, that didn’t stop him from becoming president-elect.

On Tuesday morning, Trump sung the praises of the Electoral College — an institution that historically has empowered rural white voters, thereby creating a path to victory for presidential candidates, like Trump, who aren’t popular in large cities.

Advertisement

Trump’s tweets represent a stunning flip-flop from four years ago, when he characterized the Electoral College as “a disaster for democracy” following Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama.

Despite the fact that Romney soundly lost both the popular and electoral votes, Trump called on Romney supporters to “march on Washington and stop this travesty” during his infamous Election Night 2012 tweetstorm. But as people across the country have taken to the streets over the past week to protest his victory over Hillary Clinton, Trump has flip-flipped on that issue as well.

Since the end of the 19th century, the only two presidential candidates to win an election despite losing the popular vote were Republicans — Trump this year and George W. Bush in 2000. Al Gore’s 543,895-vote margin of victory over Bush will end up being roughly half as large as Clinton’s margin over Trump.