Former President Donald Trump is predicted to win the popular vote and end a two-decade drought for Republicans, who have struggled to throw off criticism that they can only attain power because of an Electoral College system that leans in their favor.

As of Wednesday at 7 a.m. Eastern time, Trump was leading Vice President Kamala Harris in the nationwide “popular vote” by nearly 5 million votes. He racked up 71,113,511 votes to her 66,181,515 votes, setting the stage to be the first Republican to win a majority of all the votes cast in a presidential contest since 2004.

Winning a majority of the total votes cast would reverse the 20-year trend and take some of the bite out of Democratic criticism that Trump and his populist message are not what the country is demanding.

Since the 2000 election, Republicans have only won the popular vote once. President George W. Bush, seeking his second term in 2004, received 62,040,610 votes and 286 electoral votes compared to Democratic nominee John Kerry, who received 59,028,444 votes and 251 electoral votes. 

​​Of the past 24 years, then-President Barack Obama achieved the largest popular vote victory with 69.5 million votes and 365 electoral votes in 2008.

The disparity between who won the popular vote and who won the Electoral College in 2016 drove Democrats to renew their calls to abolish the constitutionally protected system of allotting votes to states based on the size of their congressional delegations.

Trump’s victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 304 electoral votes to her 227, stood in stark contrast to her romp in the national vote total. She won 48% of the total votes cast compared to his 45.9% share.

Before he left the White House, Obama called the system a “vestige” of a system “envisioned by the founders that sometimes are going to disadvantage Democrats.”

In 2017, Clinton told CNN it was time to abolish the Electoral College, saying that she thinks “it needs to be eliminated.”

“I’d like to see us move beyond it, yes,” she said.

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In this election, Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), said the Electoral College “needs to go,” a statement the Harris campaign distanced itself from.

As of Wednesday morning, Trump has won the swing states of North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, paving the way for his electoral victory. The presidential races in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada have yet to be called.