Daniel H. Lowenstein has argued:

It is doubtful whether the Congress, the public, the media, or anyone else is more deferential to an incoming President after an election in which he receives a larger electoral-vote margin than his actual popular-vote margin. Clinton did not receive such deference in 1992.

However, if anyone believes that an exaggerated margin increases "confidence" or enhances the "ability to lead," the National Popular Vote plan would do an even better job of creating this kind of exaggerated margin than the current system.

Under the National Popular Vote compact, the nationwide winning candidate would generally receive an exaggerated margin (roughly 75%) of the votes in the Electoral College in any given presidential election. The reason is that the National Popular Vote bill guarantees that the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia will receive at least 270 electoral votes (of 538) from the states belonging to the compact. Then, in addition to this bloc of at least 270 electoral votes, the nationwide winning candidate would generally receive some additional electoral votes from whichever non-compacting states he happened to carry. Because the non-compacting states would likely be divided approximately equally between the candidates, the nationwide winning candidate would generally receive an exaggerated margin (roughly 75%) of the votes in the Electoral College.

The current system does not reliably deliver an exaggerated margin to the incoming President. Despite winning by almost two million votes nationwide, Jimmy Carter won the Electoral College by only a 297–240 margin in 1976. Despite winning by over 3.5 million votes in 2004, George W. Bush won the Electoral College by only a 286–252 margin.

Of course, the current system often does more than just exaggerate an incoming President's margin in the Electoral College as compared to his margin in the nationwide popular vote. In four out of the nation's 55 presidential elections, the current system has actually awarded the Presidency to a candidate who did not receive the most popular votes nationwide. This is a failure rate of 1 in 14. Moreover, because about half of American presidential elections are popular-vote landslides (i.e., a margin of greater than 10% between the first- and second-place candidates), the failure rate is actually 1 in 7 among non-landslide elections.