https://www.yahoo.com/news/clinton-...pite-losing-election-193600422--election.html Clinton on pace to win popular vote, despite losing election STEPHEN OHLEMACHER Associated PressNovember 9, 2016 WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite losing Tuesday's presidential election, Hillary Clinton appears to be on pace to win the popular vote, an ironic twist in an election in which her opponent repeatedly said the system was rigged against him. Just two days before Election Day, Republican businessman Donald Trump tweeted: "The Electoral College is a disaster for a democracy." As it turns out, without the Electoral College, Trump probably wouldn't be the president-elect. A day after Election Day, Clinton held a narrow lead in the popular vote, according to unofficial results tallied by The Associated Press. With nearly 125 million votes counted, Clinton had 47.7 percent of the vote and Trump had 47.5 percent. That's a lead of about 236,000 votes. Many states count votes after Election Day, so Clinton isn't guaranteed to keep her lead. However, most of the outstanding votes appear to be in Democratic-leaning states, making it very likely she will become the second Democratic candidate for president this century to win the popular vote but lose the presidency. The biggest chunk of uncounted votes is in California. Washington State, New York, Oregon and Maryland also have large numbers of uncounted votes. Clinton won all those states, and if the trends continue, she will pad her lead by more than 1 million votes There are also votes to be counted in Arizona and Alaska, two Republican-leaning states. But they are far outnumbered by uncounted votes in Democratic states. Under the Electoral College system, each state gets one vote for each member of Congress representing the state. California has the most, with 55. Seven states have only three. The District of Columbia has three, even though the nation's capital has no vote in Congress. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency. Trump's total stands at 279, with races in Michigan, New Hampshire and Arizona too close to call. There have been occasional calls to scrap the Electoral College, with no success. The latest push came after the 2000 presidential election, in which Democrat Al Gore lost to Republican George W. Bush, despite winning the popular vote. Any calls to scrap the Electoral College aren't likely to go anywhere this time, either, with Republicans controlling both the House and Senate. Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democratic candidate for vice president, praised Clinton on Wednesday for winning the popular vote. But when Clinton made her concession speech, she didn't mention it.
The national popular vote total is irrelevant in the presidential election. We are a republic, not a democracy.
True but today all I heard from conservative pundits and radio is Trump won because of the will of the people,the people are angry and wanted change,the people repudiated democrat polices of the last 8 years,trump has a mandate because of the people etc.Thats not true if (the majority of )the people voted for Hillary.
We had an election with two non-trivial third party candidates. They got votes. Trump drew more black and hispanic votes than Romney. So much for the need to pander to these groups. There is something wrong with our electoral system, but it has nothing to do with the differences in the electoral and popular totals. It has to do with a system that allows tiny, unrepresentative geographic areas to set the agenda for the entire country, a problem vividly illustrated by the map. This was the identical dynamic that led to the Civil War. Lincoln, like Obama, was a radical elected with the support of a tiny portion of the country. He tried to force his agenda on the rest, and they resisted. Obama only wrecked our healthcare system. Lincoln managed to get half a million people killed and authorized horrible war crimes.
What this suggests is there are several smaller states that have more representation, (both in house reps and electors) than some other, probably larger population states. So is that good? I don't know. If each state gets two senators then certainly, all states are represented equally despite vastly different populations. Is that good? I dont know. It sounds like house seats are not distributed in exact proportion (not keeping pace) with the ever changing population either. Seems redundant that they would not just use reps for this purpose but perhaps they wanted lifetime type appointees, like judges. Anyway, an argument for not directly appealing to the populace may be they didn't want a Fed gov looping people in so directly...as in, next thing you know they are taxing people directly. Well, they already crossed that line with the income tax, taxing all citizens. Cooincidently, to vote for president, it is assumed you are volunteering to be a citizen of the Feds, as much or more than any state. And in such ways they get their hooks in for better or worse. Incidentally, I made money on bets on both popular and electoral vote. The electoral bet paid out within three hours or so. It took another day before Bovada committed to a popular outcome.
Romney got more total votes,which I think is more important than total black votes which Trump only got 8 % of those last I read. Of the last 5 major party nominees Trump got the least amount of votes.