donald trump won the popular vote for president in 2016.
donald trump won the popular vote for president in 2016.
who won the popular vote for president in 2016?
donald trump
as many mathematical analysts have noted, however, the state voting in a fashion most similar to that of the nation as a whole is not necessarily the tipping-point. for example, if a candidate wins only a few states but does so by a wide margin, while the other candidate's victories are much closer, the popular vote would likely favor the former. however, although the vast majority of the states leaned to the latter candidate in comparison to the entire country, many of them would end up having voted for the loser in greater numbers than did the tipping-point state. the presidential election in 2016 was a notable example, as it featured one of the largest historical disparities between the electoral college and popular vote. as the election was quite close, the winner of the electoral college did not capture the popular vote. additionally, this "split" was a lot larger in both directions than in previous, tighter elections, such as the one that took place in the year of 2000. in that election, vice president al gore won the popular vote by less than 1 percent, while incoming president george w. bush won the electoral college by only 4 votes. in contrast, 2016 democratic nominee hillary clinton won the popular vote by over 2 percentage points. this meant that donald trump would have picked up new hampshire, nevada, and minnesota if the popular vote had been tied, assuming a uniform shift among the battleground states. on the other hand, clinton would have had to win the popular vote by at least 3 points in order to win the electoral college, as trump, the republican nominee, won the tipping-point state of wisconsin by less than 1 percent.
swing state
elections where the winning candidate loses the national popular vote typically result when the winner builds the requisite configuration of states (and thus captures their electoral votes) by small margins, but the losing candidate secures large voter margins in the remaining states. in this case, the very large margins secured by the losing candidate in the other states would aggregate to a plurality of the ballots cast nationally. however, commentators question the legitimacy of this national popular vote. they point out that the national popular vote observed under the electoral college system does not reflect the popular vote observed under a national popular vote system, as each electoral institution produces different incentives for, and strategy choices by, presidential campaigns. because the national popular vote is irrelevant under the electoral college system, it is generally presumed that candidates base their campaign strategies around the existence of the electoral college; any close race has candidates campaigning to maximize electoral votes by focusing their get-out-the-vote efforts in crucially needed swing states and not attempting to maximize national popular vote totals by using finite campaign resources to run up margins or close up gaps in states considered "safe" for themselves or their opponents, respectively. conversely, the institutional structure of a national popular vote system would encourage candidates to pursue voter turnout wherever votes could be found, even in "safe" states they are already expected to win, and in "safe" states they have no hope of winning.
united states electoral college