Did you like the results of this election? Because it could be a bellwether of elections to come

Donald Trump’s electoral victory in 2016 will earn this election a special place on a very select list of presidential contests that were won without a popular mandate. With the vote in Michigan finally certified, the Republican secured 306 electoral votes, well above the 270 required for a majority, to 232 for Democrat Hillary Clinton. At the same time, Clinton tops Trump by more than 2 million, as of now, in the popular vote count — votes that remain to be counted and are expected to boost that lead even further.

Michigan has now certified President-elect Donald Trump’s win in the state, awarding him its 16 electoral votes

Trump: 306
Clinton: 232

— NPR (@NPR) November 28, 2016

To see the winner of the popular vote shut out of the White House is truly maddening to supporters of that candidate. It is also hard to reconcile with the premise that, in a democracy, the will of the people should decide who governs, and do so unobstructed by a system put in place more than 200 years ago by a political class for whom “democracy” was a dirty word.

{mosads}Is the disparity seen in 2016 between the popular vote and the electoral vote just a rare aberration that is unlikely to occur again soon, or is it a harbinger of a pattern we may have to live with?

To begin with, let’s look back. Thankfully, ever since it became the norm in the late 1820s to let the voters choose electors, the winner of the popular vote has only rarely fallen short of a majority in the Electoral College. It happened in 1876, 1888 and 2000. Two of those instances involved protracted ballot disputes that led to resolutions by courts (2000) or commissions (1876) outside the Electoral College. Barring a recount in this election, as urged by some Clinton supporters, Trump will join Benjamin Harrison as the only other popular-vote loser who won the electoral vote without a ballot dispute.

While the outcome of the 1888 election was no omen for the future, with the next instance of a disparity of the popular and electoral vote not coming for another 100 years, this year’s outcome appears more ominous.

Take a look at the vote in the largest state of the Union. In California, Clinton beat Trump by 4 million votes. Now consider these four medium-size states: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won them by a combined margin of barely half a million votes. California netted Clinton 55 electors, whereas the four Midwestern states gave 64 to Trump. This is the 2016 election in a nutshell. Republicans prevail in the Electoral College even though they are hopelessly outplayed in the popular-vote contest.

It happens because the Democratic vote is concentrated in a few large states, New York and Massachusetts being two others, while the Republican vote is far more evenly distributed across the states. The largest red state, Texas, gave Trump a vote lead not even reaching 1 million. It’s like a giant gerrymander where designers of state boundaries packed Democratic voters in a few large states and Republicans in a large number of smaller states. 

Looking back at the 2000 election, the most recent instance of an Electoral College winner falling short in the popular vote count, one can see it coming. Al Gore amassed 4 million more votes than George W. Bush in the coastal states of California, New York and Massachusetts combined, while Bush trailed him by a total of barely 400,000 in the heartland states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Both Bush and Trump carried Ohio. What may have obscured the ominous prospect in 2000 was the protracted recount battle in Florida that had all eyes riveted.

Barack Obama, of course, overcame those obstacles in 2008 and 2012. He did so with popular-vote margins nationwide of 10 million and 5 million, respectively. Obama also managed to carry both times the four Midwestern states that flipped to Trump, and he did so by comfortable margins. So Democrats are not shut out of winning both the electoral vote and the popular vote — what they need is another Obama or a Republican administration amassing a calamitous record of the sort left behind by George W. Bush in 2008. Both scenarios require a heavy dose of hope and fear.

In pondering their appeal in upcoming elections, Democrats must face up to the reasons why supposedly safe blue states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, along with Ohio, slipped away in 2016. Consider one electoral fact: white voters without a college degree, according to exit polls, went 2-1 for Trump over Clinton in each of those four states.

While urban turnout stalled, white voters without a college degree doomed Clinton’s chances across the rust belt https://t.co/3t1mqcLBQ8 pic.twitter.com/gKD41cJY6X

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) November 14, 2016

The white working class has long been a bastion of Democratic support, dating back to the time of the Depression and New Deal. It still numbers close to one half of the electorate in these four states. It is absolutely critical for Democrats to reclaim that vote to pave the way for a return to the White House.

At the same time, a Democratic Party dominated by leaders from the West Coast and the East Coast — like Nancy Pelosi in the House and Charles Schumer in the Senate — will find it difficult to make such an appeal. The more the Democrats go with what works in their coastal strongholds, the less chance they have of winning back the heartland. Is it any accident that Democratic presidents in recent memory hailed from states like Illinois, Arkansas, Georgia and Texas? And yes, Massachusetts, too, but that happened when it was not yet so blue.

Short of big changes in Democratic strategy or Republican calamities in office, we may be in for more elections like 2016, where Republicans win the White House in the Electoral College while Democrats win the popular vote. A bitter consolation prize for the latter.

Helmut Norpoth is professor of political science at Stony Brook University. He is coauthor of “The American Voter Revisited.” His book, “Commander in Chief: Franklin Roosevelt and the American People,” is forthcoming. Contact him at helmut.norpoth@stonybrook.edu or follow him on twitter @primarymodel16. 

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.