Although ballots are still being counted, it is already clear that Donald Trump will win the most individual votes by a wide margin. Making him the first Republican in two decades to win the so-called ‘popular vote’, or ‘the vote of the people’. Which gives Trump’s victory extra legitimacy. The last Republican to do this was George W. Bush in 2004.
5 million votes ahead
In the American electoral system, the population does not elect the president directly, but through the fifty states. Each state has a number of electoral votes: two senators by default and also members of the House of Representatives based on the number of inhabitants. States have again been divided into constituencies, which are regularly strategically redrawn by the incumbent majority in the hope that this will offer their parties an electoral advantage. In professional jargon this is called ‘gerrymandering’.
It is therefore striking that Republican Trump did not need that complex electoral system to win the American presidency with a comfortable lead. On Wednesday evening around 5 p.m., Trump had won approximately 5 million more votes nationwide than Kamala Harris, meaning he would almost certainly also win the popular vote. In 2016, Trump lost the same popular vote to Hillary Clinton by about three million votes – although he comfortably won the electoral college.
Trump’s popularity is growing everywhere
It is striking that Trump also scores remarkably well in states that are very often won by Democrats. For example, Harris won in the state of New York, but Trump received 44 percent of the votes with almost all votes counted, compared to barely 38 percent in 2020. Trump also scores significantly better in many other states such as Vermont, New Jersey, Illinois and Connecticut, all of which were won by Harris, than four years ago.
Anyone who compares Trump’s score this year with his election results four years ago will also see that the Republican has received more votes almost across the country. Only in the northwest of the country and in Colorado and Utah did Trump do worse than last time. In at least 2,367 of the 3,243 counties (districts), Trump received more votes than four years ago, the calculations show. The New York Times.
Worse than Clinton?
Harris has currently achieved the worst result for Democrats since 1988. In the states where not all votes have been counted, Kamala Harris is alone in the lead in the state of Maine. If that is the only American state that the Democrats still win, Harris also ends up with 1 electoral vote less than Hillary Clinton in 2016.
