Democratic gains in five states have opened a potential route to changing how America chooses its president before the next presidential election. Supporters of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact are targeting legislation in 2027 that could make the nationwide vote decisive. Once the compact reached its activation threshold, participating states would award their electoral votes to the national popular-vote winner, even when their own voters choose someone else.
The push centers on Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona, where Democrats secured control of the governorship and both legislative chambers in the November 2026 midterms, according to the organization promoting the compact. Those victories would put decisions about joining the agreement before Democratic-controlled governments. Each state would still need to enact the measure for its electoral votes to count toward activation.
The existing coalition includes California, Illinois, and New York, alongside smaller states such as Delaware, Vermont, and Rhode Island. Minnesota and Virginia are also participants, as is the District of Columbia. The agreement’s design allows those jurisdictions to assemble a controlling bloc within the Electoral College without requiring every state to adopt the same method of choosing presidential electors.
National Popular Vote reported that the compact currently covers 18 states and Washington, D.C., representing 222 electoral votes. That leaves supporters 48 votes short of the 270 needed to activate it. The five targeted states hold 61 electoral votes combined, meaning enactment in all five would bring the coalition to 283, exceeding the threshold by 13.
In its explanation of the proposal, the organization describes its objective as awarding the presidency to whoever receives the most votes across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Votes cast in states outside the agreement would also enter that calculation. A candidate would therefore compete for the nationwide total, with the compact’s electoral bloc assigned according to that result. The mechanism uses existing electoral votes to deliver the outcome.
The National Archives explains that federal law and the Constitution don’t require electors to follow their state’s popular-vote result. Its guidance says a legislature could direct electors to support the national winner even if that candidate lacked a majority within the state. For voters, that creates a concrete possibility: their state could cast its electoral votes for the opponent of the candidate who finished first at home.
Watch this PBS explainer on the Electoral College and proposed alternatives here:
"*" indicates required fields
The campaign has already secured partial legislative victories beyond its current membership. Its state-by-state tracker lists Arizona’s House as having passed the proposal in 2016, while Arkansas’s House approved it in 2007 and 2009. Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, and Oklahoma have also seen passage in at least one chamber. Those votes document earlier advances, but passage through an individual chamber doesn’t add a state to the compact.
The agreement also contains a deadline tied to the presidential election calendar. According to the tracker, it governs an election when states holding the required electoral majority have it in effect on July 20 of that presidential election year. For the 2028 contest, that makes July 20th, 2028, the relevant date. The organization records another route used previously: Colorado enacted the measure in 2019, and voters subsequently approved it on November 3rd, 2020.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.