Most voters believe the Electoral College should be dismantled, according to a Rasmussen Reports survey released Friday.
The poll of 1,000 voters nationwide shows:
- Eliminate Electoral College: 55 percent.
- Against eliminating it: 27 percent.
- Not sure: 19 percent.
Donald Trump won the election with 290 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 228. (270 electoral votes are needed to win.) However, he lost the popular vote to Clinton by 0.2 percent.
The poll was taken the night before and the night of Election Day, before the final results of the Electoral College and the popular vote were tallied.
Before the election took place, both parties felt strongly about eliminating the process, with Republicans slightly more interested in getting rid of it.
- Republicans: 58 percent.
- Democrats: 55 percent.
- Neither party: 51 percent.
Outside of party affiliation, voters who called themselves "conservatives" were in favor of getting rid of the process:
- Conservatives: 59 percent.
- Liberals: 54 percent.
Older voters and white voters were more likely to want the Electoral College to be dismantled.
The U.S. Constitution established the Electoral College process as a compromise between election by popular vote and Congress choosing the presidential winner. The Founding Fathers included the system to prevent voters in smaller states from being underrepresented by those in larger states, according to Rasmussen.
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