2016 Will be Fifth Election in Which Popular Vote Winner did Not Take the Office

Donald Trump is about to be elected with a majority of the electoral vote, but Hillary Clinton will probably end up with 1,000,000 more popular votes. This will be the fifth time the popular vote winner has lost the election. All five times, the Democratic Party was the victim. The other elections were 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.

As of 8:30 a.m., Fox News shows these national totals: Hillary Clinton 59,168,486; Donald Trump 59,032,954; Gary Johnson 4,006,298; Jill Stein 1,193,371; Evan McMullin 418,311. There are still tens of millions of uncounted votes. Thanks to M Carling for the link.


Comments

2016 Will be Fifth Election in Which Popular Vote Winner did Not Take the Office — 33 Comments

  1. How ironic is it that 2016 is probably the last election where the Electoral College matters, since the National Popular Vote plan is expected to pass in a majority of states before 2020.

  2. As of right now, Trump has more popular votes, but that is only temporary. When all the California, Oregon, and Washington vote is counted, the situation will have reversed. Those states take a long time to count all their votes. It will be apparent near the end of November.

  3. It’s effectively a tie. Clinton is up 33000 votes at the moment according to Politico. Less than 0.1%.

    And that’s with a heavily “Never Trump”-supported candidate in Gary Johnson drawing 3% nationally.

  4. Taking a grand look at things, this is the biggest choke in a presidential race ever, bigger than Dewey losing to Truman in 1948.

  5. Of all of those 5 elections only the 1876 election actually had the loser WINNING the popular vote with a majority. All the others, including this one merely had a plurality. We need Ranked Pair voting.

  6. I wouldn’t say that yet. The pollsters were obviously wrong, so Trump may do better than Clinton in the absentee ballot department. We won’t know for sure until a couple more weeks.

  7. @Kevin. I wouldn’t count on that. Now that the Republicans have gained more State Governor positions, some of those states may be retracting their endorsement of the National Popular Vote plan.

  8. @Brandon L: Exactly correct. Even if the final count shows a 1,000,000 vote advantage for Clinton, either Johnson OR Stein will have covered the spread.

  9. Clinton now has a nearly 200,000 vote lead with millions of votes still to be counted.

  10. “@Brandon L: Exactly correct. Even if the final count shows a 1,000,000 vote advantage for Clinton, either Johnson OR Stein will have covered the spread.”

    Evan McMullin’s 440,000 votes which was entirely centered on Republicans would’ve pushed Trump above Clinton.

    As far as third party influence on the race, more than 5% of the total vote is non-Trump, non-Clinton. It’s not just one candidate although Gary Johnson clearly got most of them. This is the best Libertarian performance in the presidential race ever. This is the best Green performance in the presidential race outside of the Nader 2000 run. Evan McMullin got 440,000 votes entering the race in August and received upwards of 20% in a state. There were 413,000 write-ins per Leip’s site at the moment. And then you get “Other” which at the moment has more than a quarter million votes per Leip again.

    I’m really interested to see the write-in vote breakdown for people like Sanders. It’s a good gauge to see the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary from Democrats and left-leaning voters.

  11. One more reason to abolish the super time bomb Electoral College.

    Will the communist Donkeys march on DC and take over the regime ??? — see the takeover of the Russia regime in 1917.
    —-
    P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.

  12. There have to be a few million votes left in California that are as yet uncounted. Less than 9 million votes counted so far, whereas 8 years ago there were 13.5 million votes cast. As more of those votes are included in the total, Clinton’s popular vote margin nationwide will go up.

  13. You have to count the Trump votes in California twice OR add 1960 to your list.

    How can you claim that the Democratic party was a victim in 1824?

  14. Will Hillary Clinton Lawyers take any legal action.If this Election is stolen then the Democratic process has been betrayed.Hopefully in 2012 it will be stable with more choices on the ballot.What if Donald Trump administration is involved in a major scandal or there is a collapse in the stock market.Who do you think will run for the Green party Presidential nomination or Libertarian party nomination in 2020.

  15. I was looking up information about Martial law.It was interesting the articles I read on before it was News.I hope it don’t happen.

  16. @ William Sollenberger:

    I think that Elizabeth Warren is the front runner for the Democrats in 2020. She’s a woman, and a Sanders-type “progressive”, whatever that overused term means.

    For the Republicans, if Trump hasn’t self-destructed, he will likely be re-nominated.

    The Libertarians, will be split between party radicals and pragmatists. The pragmatists will probably look for a renegade liberal Republican, like Johnson or Weld, to promote.

    Evan McMullin conservatives, if they know that Trump has the Republican nomination in hand, will probably start earlier, and try to find a more prominent candidate.

    The Greens could be split between supporting Warren, or one of their own.

  17. Did you see Alex Jones site info wars.He is claiming that the Globalist plan to destroy Trump by creating an economic collapse.Now that will be interesting.

  18. I personally don’t like Alex Jones.I know many do.I personally like George Noory coast to coast Am.

  19. @William Sollenberger:

    It also occurred to me that Rand Paul might seek the Libertarian nomination in 2020, like his father did, if Trump is the Republican nominee.

  20. Hopefully after Trump gets through with prosecuting Hillary and exposing Obama, there won’t be enough Democrats left anywhere to worry about.

  21. More or less STATISM in the economy is the ongoing question after ALL elections.

    I.E. more or less TAXES/borrowing and spending (and arbitrary control freak laws) by the oligarchs in the various legislative body gerrymander regimes.

  22. We can’t have a one party state.We have to have opposition party’s and a diversity of Office holders from different partys.The Democratic party will survive.The Republican party might split.Obama will still survive.See the articles about martial law.It is interesting.The Economy is not so great.That still is a challenge.Isolationist trade policy will not work.Minority communities are growing.Anything can lead to a depression.Donald Trump could be the next Herbert Hoover.

  23. I think it’s unlikely the LP radicals will have much influence in the party by 2020. Once Trump starts implementing his policies, limited government Republicans, who could sit out one election but won’t want to be associated with Trump for 4 years, could inundate the LP.

    But Rand Paul will not go for the LP nomination in 2020. He’d have 2 years left on his Senate term and that would ruin any chance he had of accomplishing anything in the Senate. When Ron Paul did it, he had left office four years earlier.

  24. I am beyond furious that a candidate again won the presidency without winning the popular vote in our country. I would feel this way regardless of my party affiliation. I adore my country and know how incredibly fortunate I am to have been born here. But I am embarrassed that this situation exists here and in no other country in the world – and that the majority of the population cannot speak for who they want to hold the highest office in their land. This is not a democracy or representation by the PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE. Instead, we have what boils down to a scheme. It is the second time it has happened in my lifetime, and I am NOT willing to wait for another election cycle to correct it. I may be too old to join those protesting in the streets, but I will make my voice heard here and elsewhere. This is an abomination.

  25. @Susan The majority of the people voting did not want Hillary Clinton in office. So why should she get elected just because she got a plurality instead of a majority? At least the Constitution is on trump’s side. And I’m a Libertarian.

  26. For those upset at the mismatch between popular vote and the Electoral College outcome, I suggest blaming not the EC but rather an unintended consequence of the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 which set the House to 435 members.
    One of the stated reasons for this Act at the time was that the Capital was literally running out of space. I submit that in our time, this is no longer an issue.
    I would suggest greatly increasing the size of the House which I believe would have many benefits of which one would be that the EC would be more in line with the National vote totals.
    I would suggest 1 Rep/100,000 giving the current House 3093 members. And the EC 3193 votes.
    Too radical? Then look at 1000 members apportioned by a simple formula of 1 rep per 0.1% of population, thus making the EC 1100 strong. Simply take the percentage of population by state multiply by 10 add 0.5 and truncate (a bone to less populous states but in line with current philosophy that it is more important to add representatives to smaller states than more populous states).
    The salient point is that the relative strength by state of the EC would be more in line with the population by state. Currently CA has 55EV while ID has 4EV or 13.75 times as strong. However CA is ~26 times more populous.

    This is what created the problem.

    One can look at the original 1st Amendment (never ratified) to see that my first idea is in line with the Founders.

  27. In 2000, Gore would have won the electoral college if the House had been expanded. But that was only because the apportionment was based on the 1990 Census which was more than a decade out of date. It turns out that the population of the states won by Gore and those won by Bush were almost identical. Had the apportionment been based on the 2000 Census, Bush would have won the electoral college regardless of the size of the House based on the difference in the number of States (x 2).

    The “fixed” size of the House is due primarily to the failure to reapportion following the 1920 Census. As population growth shifted to agricultural states, there was an unwillingness to increase the size of the House just to add seats in major cities, even if the increase would permit farm states to maintain the number of representatives. President Hoover pushed for a law to be passed prior to the 1930 Census which could provide for an automatic apportionment. Previously, the apportionment was done after the census, and there were always political considerations, including attempts to exploit the Alabama Paradox, where a state could lose a representative in a larger House, when a formula similar to yours was used.

    The Founders were not thinking when they approved the 1st Amendment. The original amendment proposed by Madison would have set a floor on the number of Representatives, but by the time it was passed by Congress, it would impose a cap (albeit a very large one).

    A better solution would be to decouple the size of the House and the electoral college, and apportion one elector among the United States and their territories, and giving Congress the authority to provide for time, place, manner regulation over their election.

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