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Final Vote Count 2016: Donald Trump’s Popular Vote And Electoral College Votes Win Election Over Hillary Clinton Claims Viral Twitter Rumor [Debunked]

By Patrick Frye
Published on: 09:52 PST, Nov 14, 2016

The final vote count for 2016 has many scrutinizing Donald Trump’s popular vote since Hillary Clinton’s popular vote is currently highest in the 2016 recount. While some Americans have all but placed President Trump in the White House, others believe there is still a chance that Hillary’s electoral college votes could rise enough to make a difference. If so, could she win and become the first woman president of America?

The protests taking place on the streets of America are ample proof about the citizenry’s lack of conviction in the election results, but the final vote count isn’t in yet. The Democrats behind organized protests believe there is still a chance, albeit slim, that Hillary could race ahead and become the commander-in-chief of America if enough faithless electors were to jump off the Trump train.

Did Donald Trump Win The Popular Vote?

In response, Trump supporters have started a viral claim that Trump’s popular vote actually exceeds Hillary’s popular vote count.

The above chart has been making furious rounds of the internet and has been cited as a proof about Trump’s lead over Hillary. Moreover, there are multiple justifications that attempt to explain one of the most surprising results in America’s general elections. Experts seem to claim that Trump may not have flipped many Democrats to gain the lead.

Instead, Hillary failed to turn out liberal voters in as large numbers as they had done when the outgoing president Barack Obama had stood for reelection. This narrative may act as a soothing balm for the Democrats and makes Secretary Clinton responsible for her own loss.

While the numbers that came out on the great election night were enough for Trump to win the presidency based upon the electoral college votes, they are, by no means, complete. According to Mediaite, Twitter and several conservative media websites are spreading the idea that Trump’s popular vote is currently winning the final vote count. Also, Trump’s popular vote win has been psychologically cemented in the minds of Americans by the dominant search engine provider, since the current top search result for “final vote count” is for a website which claims Trump is suddenly up by around 700,000 votes.

Apparently, the website bases this entire claim on an erroneous tweet.

Needless to say, the information isn’t credible. However, owing to the domino effect of social media reporting, this false tweet about Donald Trump’s popular vote numbers has been popularly crowned as fact in some conservative circles. Unfortunately, they do have good reason to be skeptical of the 2016 vote recount since a CNN error started the idea that Trump won the popular vote.

[Image by CNN]

As you can see, CNN’s website once clearly listed Trump as the “projected winner,” but CNN confirmed the projection for Trump winning was in error.

What Is The Final Popular Vote Count For 2016?

Now, what is the final vote count of 2016 you may ask? David Wasserman of Cook Political Report has been keeping an online spreadsheet with a running tally of the 2016 recount. [Update] As of 10:30 AM EST on November 23, 2016, Clinton is at 64,225,863 votes, with Trump at 62,210,612 votes, giving Hillary a lead of 2,015,251 votes. As a comparison, the AP was reporting these popular vote totals at the time of this article’s original publishing on November 14th.

Donald Trump 60,375,961 (47.28%)

Hillary Clinton 61,047,207 (47.79%)

That’s a difference of 671,246 votes.

Will provisional and absentee ballots change the outcome of the election and be enough to accord Hillary Clinton the presidency? Surprisingly, even millions of votes do not hold the power to snatch the presidency away from Trump. This is because a majority of these votes weren’t cast in swing states. Instead, a huge number of uncounted ballots are on the coasts, in New York, California, and Washington.

Needless to say, these states have always swayed towards Ms. Clinton, and even showed their support to the Democratic candidate openly. Hence, Ms. Clinton should be able to win those votes, probably 2-1, said David Wasserman, an editor at Cook Political Report who is tracking turnout.

“We probably have about 7 million votes left to count. A majority of them are on the coasts, in New York, California, and Washington. She should be able to win those votes, probably 2-1. By mid-December, when the Electoral College officially casts its ballots, Clinton could be ahead by 2 percentage points in the popular vote.”

Why the huge delay? It all comes down to the liberal absentee and mail-in voting laws prevalent in these states. States like California allows residents to submit ballots up to three days late. The only caveat is that these votes must be postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted as valid.

Given the fact that California alone has more than four million votes pending, and Washington has still to slough through 700,000, the final 2016 vote count for the popular vote should still favor of Hillary Clinton. According to the Atlantic, Clinton has actually expanded her lead in the popular vote significantly. Will that change the final electoral college vote for Hillary? That event seems very unlikely since the majority of uncounted votes should be in states Hillary already won, although Democrats are crossing their fingers.

[Featured Image by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images and Kevin Winter/Getty Images]

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