Hillary Clinton’s lead in popular vote nears 2 million

Hillary Clinton, seen here delivering her concession speech in New York City on November 9, has over 2 million more votes than Donald Trump in the national popular vote.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Clinton leads Trump by 1.82 million votes, 63,964,956 to 62,139,188, according to Associated Press figures. In a tweet he later deleted, Trump added on Election Night 2012, in reference to Obama, “He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. In every state but ME and Nebraska, the candidate who wins the most votes (that is, a plurality) in the state is supposed to receive all of the state’s electoral votes”. Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of NY and a close Trump ally, said he was happy with the decision despite the fact that he was one of the fiercest proponents of prosecuting Clinton. In the non-swing states, though, Clinton is ahead of Trump 48.9%-to-45.6%.

They are curious on why Clinton performed worse in counties that relied on electronic voting machines compared to paper ballots and optical scanners.

It became clear on Election Night that Clinton was going to win the popular vote, even as Trump secured a comfortable victory in the Electoral College.

Chants of “lock her up” were common at the GOP Presidential nominee’s campaign rallies, where he repeatedly used to call his Democratic rival “Crooked Hillary”.

The Electoral College is made up of 538 members and the number of electors is determined by the number of senators and representatives for each state.

Whether or not it’s “genius” (Trump himself previously called the college a “disaster for democracy”), the USA electoral system can’t be overturned retroactively, making Trump’s win a fact of life that Democrats must deal with.

They call their effort Hamilton Elector after Federalist Paper #68, in which Alexander Hamilton wrote that the Electoral College would stand as one more check on power – part of the movement, at that time, to win ratification of the Constitution. The presidential electors are mostly former Bernie Sanders supporters who hail from Washington state and Colorado.

The growing margin far surpasses Al Gore’s lead over President George W. Bush in 2000, which was about 540,000 votes.

A petition calling on the electors to pick Clinton when they vote in December has received over 4.5 million signatures. “The president can’t have a conflict of interest”, Trump told editors and reporters of the New York Times during an expansive, hour-long question-and-answer session.