According to The National Popular Vote website, the following states, all blue, have enacted the compact to date: California (54), Colorado (10), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (19), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Minnesota (10), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (28), Oregon (8), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (12), and the District of Columbia (3).

Additionally, the site identifies six battleground states as key targets for reaching the 270-vote threshold prior to the 2028 election. Those states include: Arizona (11), Michigan (15), New Hampshire (4), Nevada (6), Pennsylvania (19), and Wisconsin (10). 

If the compact had been in effect in 2024, President Donald Trump, who won the national popular vote, would have received the electoral votes of all participating states, further expanding his Electoral College victory. 

By contrast, had the threshold been met in 2016, Trump would have lost the presidency to Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote that year. 

A Republican winning the national popular vote, however, has been relatively rare in recent decades. Before Trump’s 2024 victory, the last Republican to do so was President George W. Bush in 2004.

For years, Democrats have sought to abolish the Electoral College. But the framers established it with deliberate purpose — one that remains valid today. Without it, smaller states and rural regions would be marginalized by the larger states, leaving them with little or no meaningful voice in presidential elections.

If the Electoral College were eliminated in favor of a national popular vote, presidential campaigns would concentrate overwhelmingly on the nation’s largest population centers. Rather than competing across a broad range of states, presidential candidates would maximize their vote totals by focusing on California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Illinois, along with a handful of major metropolitan areas. Under such a system, voters in smaller or less populous states would naturally see their representation and their influence diminished.

The Electoral College, like Congress, was designed as a compromise. It blends population-based representation, reflected in the House, with equal state representation in the Senate. In this way, it ensures that presidential candidates must build geographically broad support rather than relying solely on dense population centers.

With the compact still short of activation, its immediate impact remains theoretical. But as more states consider joining, the effort is intensifying the long-running debate over whether the Electoral College should be preserved or effectively abolished.

The Virginia Republican Party sharply criticized the “fake moderate” governor over the move, calling the new law “an unconstitutional assault on our democracy” and warning that if the state’s electoral votes were awarded to a candidate its voters did not support, it would render Virginians’ presidential votes effectively “NULL AND VOID!”

Spanberger, who presented herself as a moderate Democrat on the campaign trail, won a landslide victory in November over her Republican opponent, then–Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. 

Her governance, however, has been overtly progressive. To many constituents, the difference has felt like a bait-and-switch.

DEMOCRATS GOVERNED CALIFORNIA INTO THE GROUND

Within 48 hours of taking office, she moved to end the state’s cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Meanwhile, the Democrat-controlled legislature began advancing a slate of bills aimed at implementing her agenda, including a wave of new taxes, the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for certain serious crimes, restrictions on hand-counting election ballots, and race-based limits on eligibility for certain government contracts under $100,000.

With Spanberger at the helm, Virginia Democrats have moved quickly to lock in their progressive agenda. It was only a matter of time before they turned their guns on the Electoral College.