Hillary Clinton may have lost the war, but she did win one battle: Popular vote trackers show the Democrat pulled in at least 1.7 million more votes than President-elect Donald Trump
So far, Clinton has more than 63.6 million votes, to Trump’s roughly 61.9 million votes — or 48 per cent of votes cast, compared with 46.7 per cent for Trump.
IN DEPTH: 2016 U.S. presidential election
The Cook Political Report, a non-partisan online publication, has a running tally of the popular vote which updates automatically as results roll in.
The numbers contradict some false news reports that surfaced in recent weeks claiming Trump had clinched both the favour of the Electoral College as well as the popular vote.
This, of course, doesn’t really mean anything; Trump pulled in an Electoral College victory and is poised to take the reins as commander-in-chief on Jan. 20.
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There has been a movement to lobby electors to change their votes from Trump to Clinton, but experts say it would be extremely unlikely that the Electoral College would elect a different candidate.
Electing a new U.S. president is a bit of a tricky process. The Electoral College is made up of 538 electors distributed among the states, and the winner needs 270 votes to be declared president. All of a state’s Electoral College votes are awarded to the candidate who secures the most votes in that state.
So while Clinton has more votes overall than Trump, he still holds more Electoral College votes, which determines the presidency.
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There are more voters on the books for 2016 than 2012 — more than 132 million voters cast a ballot for the Nov. 8 election. In 2012, voter turnout was around 129 million. In 2012 President Barack Obama pulled in 3.9 per cent more votes than Mitt Romney and also won the Electoral College.
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Clinton would be the fifth candidate in the nation’s history to fall into this dubious category. The others, according to the U.S. House: Andrew Jackson in 1824, Samuel Tilden in 1876, Grover Cleveland in 1888 and Al Gore in 2000.
There is still no word on what Clinton will do now that her presidential dreams have been dashed. She has been laying low, but did admit in her first public appearance since the vote that she was deeply disappointed in the results.
With files from the Associated Press and Nicole Bogart and Monique Scotti.
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