WASHINGTON: US President-elect Donald Trump has already won the US presidential race with a big margin but he is also on the path to win the popular vote.
The provisional counts show him ahead of his Democratic rival Kamala Harris by nearly five million ballots.
Trump in his first successful presidential run in 2016, received fewer votes nationally than Hillary Clinton.
As per the latest count, Trump will secure more votes nationally in the presidential run than his defeated rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, making him the first Republican candidate to achieve this status.
Though votes were still being counted in some of the US states, Trump had received more than 72.6 million votes, against 68 million for Harris, showing a margin of around 4.6 million votes.
The last Republican presidential candidate who won more votes than his opponent was President George W. Bush way back in 2004. He won re-election against John F. Kerry.
The massive vote count shows the scale of Trump’s victory and another blow to Democrats. There was consensus among experts before Election Day that Trump and Harris would have neck-to-neck contests in the Electoral College votes.
In 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore but prevailed in the Electoral College. In the 2016 election, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, but she managed to gain nearly three million more votes nationally giving some comfort to Democrats.
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Trump has so far garnered approximately 1.5 million fewer votes in 2024 than he did during his election defeat in 2020. In 2016, he secured around 63 million votes, which is around 13 percent less than he did in this year’s election. The New York Times
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden urged Americans to lower the political temperature after Donald Trump’s crushing election win over Kamala Harris, saying in a conciliatory address to the nation that he would ensure a peaceful transition of power.
In a solemn speech from the White House on Thursday, Biden also said the result should “lay to rest” doubts about the integrity of the US election system fuelled by Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his own 2020 defeat by the Democrat.
