Despite being trounced in the Electoral College (304 to 228), Hillary Clinton won the popular vote over Donald Trump, but by how much? Well, after all the controversy, outrage and failed recount attempts, the numbers are finally all in. Dave Wasserman of Cook Political Report has provided a spreadsheet with all the vote totals, which show that Clinton ended up beating Donald Trump by over 2.8 million votes.
Here are the final numbers via Wasserman:
- Clinton: 65,844,610 (48.2%)
- Trump: 62,979,636 (46.1%)
- Others: 7,804,213 (5.7%)
With all the numbers in, Clinton ended up winning 65,844,610 votes, which is 48.2% of the total votes. That vote total is good enough to give Clinton the third most votes of any presidential candidate in history (Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 elections are first and second, respectively).
Clinton’s total beat Trump by 2,864,974 votes, a 2.1% margin. As a comparison, Al Gore won the popular vote over George W. Bush in 2000 by less than 600,000 votes, just 0.5%: 50,999,897 (48.4%) to 50,456,002 (47.9%).
That 2.1% gap ended up being only about 1 point lower than the final average of the national polls on the eve of the election (3.3%). However, the national polls were way off on the total vote percentages, predicting Clinton winning 45.2% and Trump winning 42.2% in the four-way contest, off by 3% and 3.9%, respectively. Even the head-to-head surveys underestimated turnout for both candidates; the average gave Clinton only 46.8% and Trump 43.6%, off 1.4% and 2.5%.
As HotAir’s Allahpundit points out, while Trump lost the popular vote handily, he still managed to secure the biggest vote total in history for a Republican, earning nearly one million votes more than the previous best held by George W. Bush in 2004 (62,040,610).
Wasserman’s count gives the breakdown for all the states, including the swing states that ultimately decided the election. Below are the key swing states Trump won from smallest to largest margin:
Michigan: Clinton 2,268,839 (47.3%) – Trump 2,279,543 (47.5%)
Pennsylvania: Clinton 2,926,441 (47.9%) – Trump 2,970,733 (48.6%)
Wisconsin: Clinton 1,382,536 (46.5%) – Trump 1,405,284 (47.2%)
Florida: Clinton 4,504,975 (47.8%) – Trump 4,617,886 (49%)
Arizona: Clinton 1,161,167 (45.1%) – Trump 1,252,401 (48.7%)
North Carolina: Clinton 2,189,316 (46.2%) – Trump 2,362,631 (49.8%)
Ohio: Clinton 2,394,164 (43.6%) – Trump 2.841,005 (51.7%)
Iowa: Clinton: 653,669 (41.7%) – Trump 800,983 (51.1%)
Read a comparison of the final polls vs the final results.
As for the count that matters most, though Clinton had a relatively strong performance in the popular vote, she nearly got wiped off the electoral map:
The map looks even worse for Clinton when broken up county by county:
One of the angles on the vote totals currently making the rounds underscores just how concentrated the Democrat vote really is: While Clinton won the popular vote by over 2.8 million votes, if you exclude both California (which she won by 4.2 million votes) and New York (which she won by 1.6 million), Trump wins by 3 million.
H/T Allahpundit. This article has been updated to provide more data.