Within hours of Tuesday's midterm results, a claim began racing across social media: Democrats had just won the power to abolish the Electoral College. The claim is wrong in its wording and half right in its substance. Nobody can abolish the Electoral College without amending the Constitution, and Democrats are nowhere near the two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states that would require. What the election did do is put a long-dormant workaround, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, within arithmetic reach for the first time since it was launched in 2006.
This explainer sets out what the compact is, why the 2026 results matter to it, what would have to happen next, and why even its supporters should be cautious about predicting that the 2028 presidential election will be decided by the national popular vote.
The compact is an agreement among states rather than a change to federal law. Article II of the Constitution gives each state the power to appoint presidential electors "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." Today almost every state gives all of its electors to whichever candidate wins the most votes inside its borders; Maine and Nebraska split some of theirs by congressional district. States that join the compact promise instead to give all of their electors to the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide. The pledge is dormant until the member states together hold at least 270 electoral votes, a majority of the 538. At that point the national winner would be guaranteed a majority in the Electoral College, whatever happened in individual states.
So far eighteen states and the District of Columbia have enacted the compact. Together they control 222 electoral votes, leaving the agreement 48 votes short of the threshold. That gap had been stuck for years because the remaining states that might plausibly join were either under Republican control or divided between the parties.
Tuesday changed that picture. Democrats won the governorship and both legislative chambers in five states: Pennsylvania, with 19 electoral votes; Michigan, with 15; Arizona, with 11; Wisconsin, with 10; and Nevada, with 6. Those five states hold 61 electoral votes between them. If all five enacted the compact during 2027, the member states would control 283 electoral votes, 13 more than the number needed to activate it. National Popular Vote, the advocacy group that has promoted the plan since its launch, published that calculation the day after the vote, and the arithmetic is correct.
It is worth being precise about how narrow that margin is. Pennsylvania alone accounts for 19 of the 61 votes. Without it, the other four states would bring the compact to 264, still short. Without Michigan, the total would be 268. In practice, the plan requires near unanimity among a group of new governing majorities, several of which are in states that have resisted the idea before.
The record is not encouraging for anyone expecting quick action. Michigan had a Democratic trifecta in 2023 and 2024 and did not pass the compact, even though bills were introduced. A new version, House Bill 6213, was introduced in July 2026 with dozens of Democratic sponsors and sent to a committee, where it has not advanced. In Nevada, the legislature passed the compact in 2019, only for the Democratic governor at the time to veto it, warning that it could reduce the state's influence over presidential elections. That objection has not gone away. Battleground states receive enormous attention, advertising spending and campaign visits precisely because they decide elections under the current system. A legislator in Harrisburg or Madison can reasonably ask why the state should give that leverage up.
Even if all five states acted, the compact would face a serious legal test. The Constitution's Compact Clause says that no state shall, without the consent of Congress, enter into any agreement or compact with another state. The Supreme Court has read that clause narrowly, holding that congressional consent is needed only for compacts that increase the political power of the states at the expense of federal supremacy. Supporters argue that the national popular vote agreement simply coordinates a power the Constitution already gives each state. Critics, including Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, have argued that the compact would be unconstitutional without the consent of Congress, because it alters the balance of power among the states themselves. A newly Democratic Congress might be willing to grant consent, but President Donald Trump would be expected to veto any such measure, and Democrats do not have the votes to override him.
There are practical questions as well. The compact asks each member state's chief election official to add up a national vote total from fifty states and the District of Columbia, each of which counts ballots under its own rules and on its own timetable. It contains no mechanism for a national recount. In a close national race, a state that disputes another state's count, or a state that refuses to release final figures in time, could produce litigation of a kind the country has never experienced. A state could also try to withdraw from the compact after an election had taken place but before electors met; the agreement says a withdrawal made within six months of the end of a president's term does not take effect until the next president has taken office, but the enforceability of that provision has never been tested in court.
The political arguments on each side are familiar but worth stating fairly. Supporters say the principle is simple: the candidate with the most votes should win, and every vote should count the same wherever it is cast. They point out that five presidents, most recently in 2000 and 2016, have taken office after losing the national popular vote. They argue that the current system concentrates campaigns in a handful of competitive states and leaves voters elsewhere, including Republicans in California and Democrats in Texas, without much reason to turn out in presidential years.
Opponents say the Electoral College is a deliberate part of a federal design that requires candidates to build coalitions across different regions rather than running up margins in the most populous areas. They warn that a compact adopted entirely by states controlled by one party, timed to take effect after that party lost a presidential election, would look to half the country like a partisan rule change rather than a democratic reform. They also note that the compact keeps the Electoral College in place while emptying it of meaning, which could invite exactly the kind of crisis of legitimacy its supporters say they want to avoid.
There is a further twist that both sides tend to overlook. Recent elections have not consistently favoured one party in the Electoral College relative to the popular vote. In 2024, Mr Trump won both. A system that guaranteed the presidency to the national vote winner would not necessarily favour Democrats in 2028, and it would change campaign strategy in ways that are hard to predict. Turnout patterns themselves would shift once every vote in a safe state carried weight.
What happens next will be decided in five state capitols, not in Washington. New legislatures will be sworn in early in 2027. Watch for whether compact bills are filed early and given priority, whether the new governors, particularly in Nevada and Arizona, signal support, and whether legislative leaders in Pennsylvania treat it as a priority alongside budgets, energy prices and the other issues that dominated the campaign. Watch also for whether any Republican state moves in the opposite direction, for example by adopting a law designed to prevent its own vote totals from being used in a compact calculation.
The honest conclusion is that Tuesday made a national popular vote for 2028 possible but not likely. The path requires five separate legislative victories, the signatures of five governors, a favourable reading of the Compact Clause by a Supreme Court that has not addressed the question, and a smooth administrative process in a close race. Any one of those could fail. What the result has done is to turn an academic debate into a live political choice, and to ensure that the rules for choosing the next president will be argued over long before anyone casts a ballot.