As Steven Dennis of Bloomberg reminds us, President-elect Donald Trump had a very different attitude about the Electoral College on election night in 2012, when he briefly believed that President Obama would win re-election while losing the national popular vote to Mitt Romney.
This was because Obama had been projected as the winner based in part on exit polls in the large Democratic stronghold of California, while hardly any actual votes there had yet to be counted. When the outstanding votes from California and other states were counted, Obama had indeed won the national popular vote.
And that wasn't all. Trump also posted a series of tweets — which he deleted soon afterwards, when it became clear Obama would win the national vote — calling for outright resistance, such as: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"; and also, "More votes equals a loss…revolution!"
Political experts are projecting that Trump will have lost the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton in this year's election — while winning in the Electoral College thanks to his narrow victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Eric Kleefeld