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Donald Trump Says He Would Have ‘Won Bigger’ If It Was Up To Popular Vote: Clinton Still Has Chance To Win?

By Chris Featherstone
Published on: 10:40 PST, Nov 15, 2016

Sixteen years ago, the United States of America witnessed one of the most nail-biting elections in the country’s history, as the race to the White House between candidates George Bush and Al Gore came down to the total vote count of Florida. While the final conclusion gave Bush the votes and the election, it still did not squelch any controversy regarding who won. Interestingly, FactChecker reports that Gore may have actually won Florida by a range of 42 to 171 votes.

While this year does not have the same level of controversy, as there is no doubt that Donald Trump has surpassed the targeted goal of 270 electoral votes needed to win the election, he has indeed lost the popular vote. In fact, since the state of California has such a large number of votes, and not every one has been counted, the margin may widen to as much as one to 2 million votes.

According to Politico, the latest numbers show that Clinton is up more than 1 million national votes, 61,963,234 to 60,961,185.

This information has eclipsed the reporting of Trump actually winning the popular vote. Regarding his lead, there have been many erroneous reports of this being the case, and fellow politicians who support him have been quick to soak it up. One of those supporters is former judge and current FOX News analyst Jeanine Pirro.

Regarding Trump, she stated, “Pres-elect Trump’s acting w/nothing but class & dems should follow how this man’s conducting himself.”

Fans of Pirro recently bragged about the reports of Trump’s popular vote lead, telling everyone who did not believe this data to “shut up.”

However, proponents of Trump believing that he won the popular vote may need to rescind their stance. Not only due to numbers showing differently but because of the data showing that it may get even greater as votes continue to be counted.

Heavy reports that, as of November 14, Clinton had a lead in California of 2,883,196 votes, and in New York of 1,779,506 votes. Moreover, these numbers are not final, so the difference could, in fact, reach 2 million.

As a result, those on the left are outraged, oddly echoing the “system is rigged” mantra donned by Trump for most of his election campaign.

Rachel Maddow Show blogger Steve Benen is one of them.

“Trump is the president-elect. Rules are rules. The process is flawed, but we can’t pretend it was illegitimate just because enough voters chose a ridiculous candidate. Let’s also not pretend, however, that Trump is riding a wave of popular support into the White House – because he isn’t. The Democratic candidate received more votes than any candidate in American history who’s name isn’t Barack Obama.”

Apparently, Trump is deciding to concede that he has not won, nor will win, the popular vote this term. However, in typical Trump fashion, he praised the system – which once was rigged – due to it being in his favor, via Twitter.

“The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!”

In all fairness, he does make a reasonable point. If this, or any, election was determined strictly due to the popular vote, it would give littler states who favor a candidate that is statistically trailing no influence in the process. Instead, states like New Hampshire was one of the biggest focal points on November 8.

However, this certainly was not his sentiment four years ago, when it did not favor his ideal choice for president.

While the point he made was rational, perhaps his take on redirecting his strategy may not be. Today, he stated that if it was up to the popular vote, he would have campaigned harder in the key states of New York, California, and Florida, causing a general election embarrassment for Clinton.

It is quite amusing that the “rigged system” actually played out in his favor, and he is now the president-elect. Interestingly, this topic of Clinton widening the gap of the popular vote is not futile.

According to the New York Times, not every electoral voter could maintain the integrity in voting who the particular state chose, and in this scenario, a person would be deemed a “faithless elector.”

“…there is technically nothing stopping any of the electors from voting their conscience and refusing to support the candidate to whom they were bound, or from abstaining from voting altogether.”

The topic of such a wide margin of the popular vote raises a very interesting case for electors heading into the final verdict. While there is a very small possibility that it may happen, FactChecker confirms that a Hillary Clinton election is not totally out of the question.

[Featured Image By Jose Luis Magana/AP Images]

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