The United States is a representative democracy, and the Electoral College plays a huge role so the most popular candidate may not win.

The statement above is correct about the Electoral College, but the US is (or is supposed to be) a Representative Republic.

We "democratically" elect our representatives, but we are not a "democracy" as it is the representatives that make the decisions, not the "rule of the people" directly. More like "rule of the democratically elected representatives". Representatives vote the will of the majority, state by state, but the people cannot vote directly for president. SHOCK!

Might seem like splitting hairs, same thing, who cares, just technicalities, but there is an important distinction: a "Representative Democracy" would determine it's leaders by POPULAR VOTE, while a "Representative Republic" would determine it's leaders by decision of the individual STATES, specifically by the votes of our Representatives, determined by popular vote in that STATE. So it's really 50 individual popular vote elections happening all at once, determining how the representatives will vote on January 6th. And THEY get to vote for president. We just get to tell them how to vote!

I just learned all this myself, so I'm refreshing my own mind with this. :-)