Donald Trump’s popular vote win is the sweetest victory for him

Donald Trump has been elected as president of the United States for the second time according to The Associated Press (AP), with 277 Electoral College votes. This figure is expected to rise as Trump is also leading in the swing states of Michigan, Nevada and Arizona according to the agency, putting him on track for a clean sweep of the seven battleground states that were widely expected to decide the election.

In contrast to 2016 Trump also looks on track to win the popular vote, with 71,766,277 ballots against 66,885,279 for Harris as of 12:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday according to AP. Trump described winning the popular vote as “very nice” and “great” during his victory speech in Florida in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

A victory in the popular vote would make it much harder for the legitimacy of Trump’s 2024 presidential election to be questioned. In 2016 while Trump secured 306 Electoral College votes he received nearly 3 million fewer votes in total than Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. As a result of this, and allegations of Russian interference, Trump was dogged by questions about the legitimacy of his victory.

Speaking in 2019 former President Jimmy Carter said: “I think a full investigation would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”

Hillary Clinton branded Trump an “illegitimate president” during a CBS interview in the same year.

Trump made a big deal of his apparent popular vote triumph during his victory speech from Florida in the early hours of Wednesday morning. He said: “We also have won the popular vote, that was great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Winning the popular vote was very nice, very nice, I will tell you. It’s a great, a great feeling of love.”

Newsweek contacted Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign for comment via email on Wednesday.

In a post on X Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who Trump defeated in the Republican Party primary, said: “The scope of the victory — electoral swing state domination, popular vote victory, and a Republican-controlled Senate — represents a decisive rejection of the Biden-Harris administration.”

Financial Times associate editor Edward Luce commented: “Four years ago, a victorious Joe Biden wrote off Donald Trump as an ‘aberrant moment.’ Given that Trump has a fair chance of winning the popular vote, in addition to America’s Electoral College, history will surely now award that designation to Biden.

“Trump, after all, is among the most known and highly investigated nominees in U.S. history. To elect him once may have been an accident; to do so twice came with eyes wide-open. Trump is legitimately the president of the United States.”

Harris has yet to formally concede and is due to address the nation at 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Newsweek has learned. Speaking overnight at Howard University in Washington, D.C., a historically Black college that Harris studied at, her campaign co-chair Cedric Redmond said: “You won’t hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow.”