Are republicans going to win the presidency without the popular vote again this year?

so I see on-line civics classes are still not considered "essential".....

There’s a reason we have the Electoral College.  The Founding Fathers specifically stated that we are a constitutional republic and not a democracy.  In addition, the Electoral College has elected every President since George Washington.  

The electoral college is not rigged. 48 states use a winner take all based upon the popular vote of the state. Both sides know that which is why they go campaigning in the swing states.

You should not throw around the word reasonable and anyone that would vote for Biden in the same sentence.

The last 2 rep presidents were elected w/o the popular vote. The rep party is 4 for 4 doing this. No wonder they won't debate the outdated electoral college. America took a gigantic step toward democracy in 1913 when it made federal senators subject to direct election. Time to apply this to the presidency so everyone's vote counts the same. 

Trump has already admitted to the voters that Republicans cannot win a fair election.  Let's hope prosecutors at all levels are quick to pounce on Republicans who engage in election fraud and that all the states have put in place security so their vote tallying systems are either completely off-line or are hardened to the point where Putin's corps of hackers can't break in again.

MAYBE YES, MAYBE NO
ONLY GOD KNOWS

Michael Moore agrees with you, and he’s a smart guy who’s been around the block a few times. This country is going the way of Ancient Rome before it fell. Greed and amorality rule the day. But give the masses their “panem 
et circenses”, keep them entertained and (barely) alive, and they’re putty in your hands. The current entertainer in the WH understands this. It also worked for those decadent Roman emperors ... until it stopped working....

we can assuredly hope so

Before Trump won the primary in '16, I remember thinking a couple of things.

One- there is no way this guy will win the primary. And two- he's improvising this without any type of ground game or electioneering apparatus. It's a good thing for him that he gets so much attention and free media. I don't think he'll win, but if he had the full backing of the GOP he very well might.

Then he did win. So now that hypothetical is in play. It's hard to say exactly how Covid-19 will play out, but it does seem like he's playing well to his base. His base does not live near the coasts and is not as affected by the virus. They think that statewide shutdowns are silly and they want to get back to work. Trump's rhetoric as of right now is playing to them. They still aren't back at work, but they feel as though Trump would get the country moving again if he could.

Also, Biden is the nominee. Think about how weak of a candidate he is. Compare the energy behind him to the energy behind Obama on his first run. So much hope, so much optimism- and none of that for Biden. He hasn't even gotten started yet and the energy among Democratic voters is worse than it was for Obama midway through his second term. (Not that he was a bad president- it was more like a process of coming to the realization that expectations were unreasonably high to begin with). The expectations just aren't there for Biden. He's got Hunter problems, he's got a staffer that alleges unwanted digital penetration, he can't talk, he's not a good candidate. He's the establishment choice and we all know it.

I predict that Trump's base is highly motivated to get out and vote, Biden will have difficulty consolidating his base, and crucial voting groups like independents and young people will slide over more in Trump's direction. That's not a surprise- it's the advantage of the incumbent. Trump isn't a weird sight that came out of nowhere at this point. He's the sitting President and yes, this time around he's got the full GOP apparatus on his side plus an incredible fund raising capacity that's literally 10 times what Biden has pulled in so far, and with donations that average about 27 dollars per. He's a populist and he's been able to get that type of donation outcome. He's doing exactly what Democrats have dreamed of for a long time- and now he's outflanking Biden on healthcare.

Some of the result is going to depend on who Biden chooses as his running mate. We know it's going to be a woman, and I say that's a nice thing according to me. I also say it could be a plus or a minus in terms of total outcome depending on who he chooses- where she's from, what her appeal is, just how establishment is she. The usual stuff.

On the whole, there are some unknown factors still in play but I do think it's entirely realistic for Trump to win reelection with or without winning the popular vote. If I was going to estimate in the form of percentages, I'd say Trump should be favored 55-45 as a relatively slim favorite to win. In the event that he does win, I'd give him 60-40 odds of winning the popular vote- in other words, it's perfectly feasible and a bit more likely than the other scenario where he wins the EC. Looking at the total picture, however, 0.6 x 0.55 is 0.33, meaning I'm giving him a 1 in 3 chance of winning the popular vote overall.

The really nice thing for Trump is that he can parley those 1 in 3 odds into frontrunner status, simply because Biden has no chance of winning without the popular vote. It just isn't possible for things to fall that way for him. So again, 1 in 3 odds that Trump wins the popular vote (and obviously the election). Biden is looking at 45 out of 100 that he wins both, and Trump is probably looking at roughly 1 in 8 odds of winning the EC without winning the popular vote.

Did I just make those numbers up? I sure did. I think they're good numbers though, and as good a guess a you're going to get from anybody. Let me tell you the numbers I'm really going to be keeping an eye on, though.

One of the most interesting sets of numbers from the 2016 election was the Trump-Romney comparison. If you look at the percentage points for D and R from each and every state in the Obama-Romney competition, you can assign Romney a certain number for each state and compare Trump's performance to that. Guess what happens when you do that? Something really interesting happens. Trump makes gains in 47 states out of 50 (51 including DC). Even in states where Trump lost, he gained at least one or two percentage points (on margin) in comparison to Romney's performance. Now, a lot of this surely has to do with the fact that Obama was the other politician on the ballot. Hillary probably sees herself as comparable- she did go head to head with him and expected to win- but she is not comparable for a number of reasons. I won't get into that at the moment though.

The main idea is this. Hillary is a step below Obama in terms of electability. Also, it well may be that Trump is a step ahead of Romney in electability, and he sure did move the needle in the Republican direction in almost every contest. Don't forget that he lost the popular vote by 3 million- I know you haven't- but also don't forget about the directionality of this thing and the gains that an unproven politician was able to make against the closest thing that we have to political royalty in this country and against the results of the previous election.

So here's what I'm keeping an eye on- a similar comparison of Trump 2016 to Trump 2020. Will he be able to build on those gains against Biden? It is important to note that it's Biden, too. Hillary did herself no favors by choosing Kaine as her running mate, but even with no VP pick thus far it's already clear that Biden (at this moment in time) is not as strong a candidate as Hillary and he's several steps behind Obama. The rule of thumb also states that an incumbent President should expect a bump when running for re-election as compared to the initial race. Because of those two things taken together, I am expecting- and we'll see if this happens- that Trump will once again make gains on a previous performance, this time his own. State by state, almost across the board, I expect that the margins for the Republican candidate will improve almost everywhere, and there will probably be fewer than 5 states that perform better for the Democrats than they did in '16. I do expect 2 or 3 to express an even greater amount of outrage than before- perhaps as many as 4 or 5- but those are states that Trump never expected to win anyway. New York. California. That type of thing. Also DC, although it's not an actual state.

If you're kind enough to read this all the way through, I hope you'll keep an eye on that as well. I'm including sources where you can browse through and do the math, then let's keep an eye on 2020 as it unfolds and see if Trump is able to improve on that performance in a state by state comparison. For context, Trump was able to better the 2012 results by an average of 2.5% on margin (which is quite a large nationwide swing from one election to the next). Suppose Trump is able to duplicate that and move the needle in the GOP's favor by an additional 2.5%, and we'll ballpark voter turnout at 128 million or so. An additional 2.5% swing (which there is reason to predict, although again it's fairly large) is....just over 3 million, which was the margin by which he lost the popular vote to Hillary.

Okay, so what if he makes similar levels of gains but it's only 2% across the board? That means he makes up only 2.5 million out of the 3 that he lost by last time. He could very easily win the EC by an even greater margin and still lose the popular vote- again- by a small margin. It could totally happen. But against a candidate like Biden, I wouldn't doubt that Trump can defeat him in both categories.

As I'm going through and comparing the results from those sources, I'm noticing that there were two close races that Trump won where Hillary made it closer than in the previous cycle- and they are Georgia and Arizona. Both of them used to be safe for the GOP but there's been a large amount of purpling, and they are in play now more than ever. So yes, there is some of that in certain states. If you're looking at the overall national popular vote, however, the gains that Trump made in not-at-all-close states are just as important. He ran up the margin and vote total in all of the very safe states (albeit low population) and he made some gains over 2012 in most of the states where he still lost by a lot. Those matter. They're invisible to the EC results and they're white noise that no one is going to analyze on election night, but when you make these gains over and over again- even in races that don't matter- they eventually add up. Trump made gains at nearly every opportunity across the board, and he may be able to make similar gains in the upcoming campaign.