Clinton still expected to win popular vote despite Trump’s victory

By Kayla LaRosa 11/11/16

Donald Trump did what seemed to be the impossible this week by clinching his spot as the 45th President of the United States and winning the electoral college, but his Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton is still hanging on to the popular vote.

Clinton called Trump to concede on Wednesday as the absentee votes were still trickling in around the country, giving Clinton a narrow lead in the popular vote- about 47.7% to Trump’s 47.5%. According to CNN’s tally, she had 59,755,284 votes in comparison to Trump’s 59,535,522 with 92% of the expected vote counted. The marginal difference in the number of votes that each candidate received was a thin one, countering the early predictions by several major polling places that Clinton would win both the electoral and popular vote by a landslide.

Clinton is the first Presidential candidate to have won the popular vote and not the electoral vote since the highly controversial Presidential election of 2000, when Al Gore ran against George W. Bush. Since Trump’s election, there has been a countrywide outrage, many calling for the electoral college to be abolished in future election cycles.

Trump has also disparaged the electoral college in the past, such as the 2012 Presidential election when Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama, calling it a “disaster for democracy.”

Much to the surprise of the American people, Trump swept the electoral college, winning the electoral votes of battleground states such as Florida and North Carolina, which were all previously predicted to go to Clinton.