I think that what has happened is that people have begun to understand just what the Electoral college is and how it works.
I know I have gained a much better understanding of it and my kids have as well.
Besides, we are a representative republic. We are NOT a democracy, no matter how many times we are told that.
They never explained the Electoral College in high-school civics class in the 1980s, implying that it was some kind of anachronism that was left over from slavery days; they always falsely called the USA a “representative democracy” too. And they always put a positive spin on the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments to boot.