Hillary Clinton Now Leading Donald Trump By More Than Two Million Votes

Hillary Clinton's margin in the popular vote against President-elect Donald Trump has surpassed 2 million, furthering the record for a candidate who lost in the Electoral College. Thanks to votes still being counted in California and other western areas, Clinton's vote advantage hit the 2 million mark on Wednesday morning, according to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report. As of mid-day Wednesday, Wasserman's spread sheet had Clinton at 64,225,863 votes to Trump's 62,210,612.

Donald Trump told the New York Times yesterday the same thing George W. Bush told anyone who would listen in 2000: He could've won the popular vote if he'd wanted to win the popular vote...

We had a great victory. I think it would have been easier because I see every once in awhile somebody says, ‘Well, the popular vote.’ Well, the popular vote would have been a lot easier, but it’s a whole different campaign. I would have been in California, I would have been in Texas, Florida and New York, and we wouldn’t have gone anywhere else. Which is, I mean I’d rather do the popular vote from the standpoint — I’d think we’d do actually as well or better... I think the popular vote would have been easier in a true sense because you’d go to a few places. I think that’s the genius of the Electoral College. I was never a fan of the Electoral College until now.

Sure, Donald. You could've won California—a state you lost by 30+ points—if you'd just had a few more rallies there.

And saying Trump was no fan of the Electoral College until now is an understatement. Here's what Trump tweeted out in 2012 when it looked like Obama might lose the popular vote to Romney but win the electoral college:

Don't say I didn't warn you. And here's what Democrats can do about the Electoral College. </s> (JTA) — Jill Stein, the presidential nominee of the Green Party, has requested a full hand count of Michigan’s presidential vote.

Stein made the request on Wednesday in the state where President-elect Donald Trump defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by less than 11,000 votes, or two-tenths of one percent of the state’s nearly 4.8 million votes.

Stein, who is Jewish, has already requested vote recounts in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, Trump defeated Clinton by some 22,000 votes. In Pennsylvania, Trump defeated Clinton by about 71,000 votes, or one percent of all votes cast.

Trump currently leads Clinton in the Electoral College by 306 to 232. Clinton leads Trump in the popular vote by more than 2.3 million votes.

It is unlikely that the recounts will overturn the election’s results. </s> Hillary Clinton, in what was likely her final visit to Southern Nevada before the Tuesday election, told supporters that she endeavored to be a candidate who gives people someone to vote for, rather than simply collecting votes from people voting against her rival.

At which point she asked her audience to imagine how truly horrible a Donald Trump presidency might be by conjuring a comprehensive laundry basket of deplorables that omitted only the angel’s trumpet, bowls of wrath and four horsemen.

Trump demeans women, mocks the disabled, promises to round up immigrants (technically, criminal illegal immigrants), criticizes an American judge because of his Mexican heritage, speaks of black people leading lives exclusively of poverty and despair, intends to ban Muslims from the United States, thinks wages are too high, once fought union organization at his Las Vegas hotel, stiffs contractors on his projects, says hotheaded things about war and foreign policy, insults a Gold Star family and won’t even say whether he’ll accept the results of the election.

And they say Clinton doesn’t have the stamina to be president.

“As you talk to people and urge them to come out to vote, remind them of what’s at stake,” Clinton said. “Everything.”

Surely, this was not the speech Clinton wanted to give this late in the race, especially in a state in which she ought to be comfortably ahead such as Nevada. (As of Wednesday, Democrats were leading Republicans in early and mail-in voting by a margin of 42 percent to nearly 37 percent, a difference in real votes of more than 33,000 out of more than 622,000 cast, according to the secretary of state’s office.)

But things are tightening up, locally and nationally. A race that held Clinton comfortably ahead has begun to narrow. So Clinton has scrapped a “don’t stop thinking about tomorrow” closing speech in favor of the very thing she said she didn’t want: a campaign highlighting the relative evils of her foe.

There are worse things, of course. Clinton is correct in many, if not most, of her deprecating remarks about Trump and his personal and political style. You can almost hear the frustration and amazement in her voice when she even mouths aloud the possibility that Trump could still win the White House if enough Clinton voters fail to show up to the polls. No wonder she’s heading to friendly states and asking friendly audiences to reach out to their friends and family and get every single eligible voter to the polls.

You can almost see her trying to take a baseball bat to the notion that if Trump were to be entrusted with the White House, the awesome responsibility of the office would somehow transform him from a selfish, narcissistic blowhard to a humble, shrewd statesman. (To be sure, many of Trump’s most ardent supporters would consider such a transformation to be a bad thing.)

And it’s not just Clinton courting the Silver State late in the game. Trump announced Wednesday he’d be in Reno on Saturday for a visit to Nevada’s critical swing county (Republicans outnumber Democrats there only by slightly more than 3,600 voters). And his son, Donald Trump Jr., visited Las Vegas on Thursday for a quick speech at Ahern Manufacturing.

Trump doesn’t need the White House, his son said in remarks. He wants it because he loves the American dream.

Odd, isn’t it, how so many American dreams of aspiring to greater heights end up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Four more days to go, folks. Today’s the last day to early vote, so do so now, or do it on Tuesday.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com. </s> Breaking - Early results show Trump is leading Clinton in New Hampshire

Donald Trump has 52.5 percent to Hillary Clinton's 41 percent in early results out of New Hampshire, according to CNN. New Hampshire has four electoral votes. The candidate who receives at least 270 Electoral College votes becomes the next president. </s> President-elect Donald Trump claimed without evidence Sunday that “millions” voted illegally in the national election, scoffing at Hillary Clinton’s nearly 2 million edge in the popular vote and returning to his campaign mantra of a rigged race even as he prepares to enter the White House in less than two months.

Trump and his lieutenants assailed an effort — now joined by Clinton — to recount votes in up to three battleground states, calling the push fraudulent, the work of “crybabies” and, in Trump’s estimation, “sad.”

The president-elect went on to cast a shadow over the legitimacy of an election that he actually won, tweeting that “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” He further contended that if the popular vote determined the presidency, “It would have been much easier for me to win” it because he would have altered his campaign to pile up overall vote totals, not Electoral College votes.

There’s been no indication of widespread vote manipulation, illegal voting or hacking that materially affected the outcome one way or the other. It’s that very lack of evidence that suggests Trump is likely to prevail in recounts.

As Trump worked to fill foreign policy and national security posts in his Cabinet, a top adviser expressed astonishment that 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney remained under consideration for secretary of state after his campaign-long questioning of Trump’s character, intellect and integrity.

Trump on Sunday tweeted part of Clinton’s concession speech, when she told supporters they must accept that “Donald Trump is going to be our president,” and snippets from her debate remarks, when she denounced the Republican nominee for refusing to say in advance that he would accept the Election Day verdict.

This came on top of his saying it was a “scam” that Green Party nominee Jill Stein was revisiting the vote count in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and as of Wednesday, held a lead of almost 11,000 votes in Michigan, with the results awaiting state certification Monday. His Michigan margin was a hair’s breadth 0.22 percent of the state’s votes.

Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but Trump won 290 electoral votes to Clinton’s 232, not counting Michigan. She could conceivably tip the electoral balance in the remote event that all flipped to her in recounts.

Trump planned to return to New York on Sunday after spending Thanksgiving weekend at his West Palm Beach estate. His transition team said the president-elect had scheduled a series of meetings Monday with prospective administration hires.

Among the jobs Trump has still yet to fill: secretary of state. Internal division over the position again spilled out into the open on Sunday as Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway voiced her concerns with the possibility of Romney landing such a significant position.

Trump supporters “feel a bit betrayed that you can get a Romney back in there after everything he did,” Conway said. “We don’t even know if he voted for Donald Trump. He and his consultants were nothing but awful to Donald Trump for a year.” She added that she was “reflecting what the grassroots are saying.”

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker are among other prospects to serve as the country’s top diplomat.

“I’m all for party unity, but I’m not sure we have to pay for that with the secretary of state position,” Conway said.

Trump’s incoming chief of staff, national party Chairman Reince Priebus, acknowledged that Romney would represent “a team of rivals concept.”

Trump was mostly silent on the brewing recount effort until it became known that Clinton would join it, at least in Wisconsin. On Saturday, a day after Wisconsin officials said they would conduct the first presidential recount in the state’s history, Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias said: “We intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides.”

Elias said Clinton would take the same approach in Pennsylvania and Michigan if Stein were to follow through with recount requests in those states.

“Hillary Clinton conceded the election when she called me just prior to the victory speech and after the results were in,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “Nothing will change.”

He quoted from her concession speech — “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead” — and he concluded: “So much time and money will be spent — same result! Sad.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Conway said Stein, “the Hillary people” and others supporting recounts have to decide whether they are going to back a peaceful transition “or if they’re going to be a bunch of crybabies and sore losers about an election that they can’t turn around.”

Priebus, on “Fox News Sunday,” called the effort a “total and complete distraction and a fraud and something that they should drop.”

Clinton’s lawyer said her team has been combing through the results since the election in search of anomalies that would suggest hacking by Russians or others and found “no actionable evidence” of an altered outcome.

Elias said Trump also has a vote lead even in the closest states that well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount.

But “we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself,” he said.

Trump beat Clinton in Wisconsin by fewer than 22,200 votes, less than 1 percent of votes cast. He won Pennsylvania by some 70,600 votes, just more than 1 percentage point over Clinton. </s> besides winning the Electoral College "in a landslide" in the Nov. 8 election: "I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

The allegation, made without evidence, comes as Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote over Trump has surpassed 2 million votes and is expected to grow to more than 2.5 million as ballots in populous states such as California continue to be tallied.

Clinton's legal team said on Saturday it had agreed to participate in a recount of Wisconsin votes after the state's election board approved the effort requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, which Trump has called "ridiculous."

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," Trump tweeted as reporters waited for him to leave his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida to fly back to his residence in New York City.

The U.S. presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, based on a tally of wins from the state-by-state contests, rather than by the national vote. Trump has surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. The Electoral College results are expected to be finalized on Dec. 19.

Trump added he would have won the "so-called popular vote ... easily and convincingly" if the U.S. election was determined that way instead of by the Electoral College.

Before the election, Trump made unsubstantiated allegations that the results of the election might be "rigged" against him.

Since the vote, Trump's message has alternated between appealing for unity and railing against his opponents and the media.

In a video message released ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, Trump said he hoped it would be a time for Americans "to begin to heal our divisions" following a "long and bruising political campaign."

Trump has derided the fundraising effort by Stein to launch recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania as a "scam." Those states had voted Democratic in recent presidential elections but all broke narrowly for the Republican Trump in this month's election. The recounts are not expected to change the results of the election.

Stein, who won about 1 percent of the national vote, has said she wants a recount to guarantee the integrity of the U.S. voting system, a push that came after some experts raised the possibility that hacks could have affected the results.

Democratic President Barack Obama's administration has said there is no evidence of electoral tampering, but experts have said that the only way to verify the results are accurate is to conduct a recount.

Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence have a series of meetings in New York on Monday to interview potential Cabinet members and other advisers. Trump takes office on Jan. 20. </s> ATLANTA (AP) — With Hillary Clinton’s lead narrowing recently, the Democrat’s path to the Oval Office appears to rest where it did at the outset — a retooled version of the alliance that twice elected President Barack Obama.

Her aides are calling it “the Hillary coalition,” rather than “the Obama coalition,” distinguished by her dependence on an apparent surge of Hispanic voters, while Obama set records for African-American turnout. But the foundations remain the same: nonwhite voters, millennials and women. Even some Republicans acknowledge that still gives Clinton an advantage over Donald Trump in an increasingly diverse country.

“Everything we are doing is reaching out to our core coalition,” said Clinton aide Marlon Marshall.

Clinton’s battleground blitz involves a bit of everything: 45 million phone calls and door-knocks in targeted neighborhoods; massive rallies with Barack and Michelle Obama in North Carolina and elsewhere; concerts with celebrities in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Trump maintains his confidence, energizing conservatives and working-class whites with sharpened attacks on Clinton as a corrupt front for an unpopular political establishment. He’s been buoyed by the FBI’s revelations that agents are still eyeing Clinton’s handling of classified national security material when she led the State Department.

In New Hampshire this past week, he warned electing Clinton “would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis.” And he’s mocking Clinton’s celebrity lineups: “I am here all by myself. Just me. No guitar, no piano, no nothing.”

Chris Carr, the Republican National Committee’s political director, said Trump is “rapidly closing in states which pundits said were out of reach just a few weeks ago.” Yet Clinton’s aides and more than a few Republicans still argue that she retains the upper hand, given the diversity in many battleground states key to amassing the 270 electoral votes required to win.

GOP pollster Whit Ayres said Trump’s bounce reflects Republican voters who’ve reluctantly decided to support him. “But what that does,” Ayres said, “is bring us back to the structural advantages … the Democrats enjoy, and will continue to enjoy until my side figures out how to deal with a rapidly changing America.”

Just a few weeks ago, Clinton emerged from her final debate against Trump contemplating a wide popular vote margin, not to mention a big Electoral College win. She and Michelle Obama campaigned in Arizona, usually a GOP stronghold, and her campaign ballyhooed new spending in Missouri, Indiana and elsewhere. Democrats talked openly of sweeping gains in the House and Senate.

Then FBI Director James Comey disclosed his agency was scouring a newly discovered cache of emails that may or may not produce relevant information about how Clinton handled classified State Department materials. Ayres said Comey’s vague letter to congressional Republican leaders was enough for Trump to shift the focus away from his treatment of women and other controversies and remind GOP voters why they so detest Clinton.

The confidence in Trump’s camp notwithstanding, Republicans are left with a familiar conundrum. Four years ago, Mitt Romney won about six out of 10 white voters nationally. That’s roughly the same proportion that George H.W. Bush notched in 1988. The difference was a much whiter electorate: Bush won 426 electoral votes and 41 states; Romney won 24 states good for just 206 electoral votes.

Trump’s appeal among white voters may be enough to flip states like Iowa, which is more than 90 percent white, and Ohio, where Obama lost ground with white voters from his 2008 election and needed a spike in black turnout to pad his 160,000-vote statewide margin.

But Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said that still leaves Clinton with a “firewall” in places like North Carolina, Florida and Nevada, where early voting suggests an increase in Hispanic and Asian-American voting and strong support among African-Americans, even after the president warned the black vote was “not where it needs to be.” Marshall, chief of Clinton’s state-based campaign organizations, said those early returns are the results of a massive campaign operation that’s been building for more than a year.

Marshall and Mook said their analysis also shows Clinton outpacing Trump among white millennials. Obama won young voters overall in 2012 by a wide margin, but that depended on nonwhites; he still lost narrowly among white millennials. Mook also said that even with Trump consolidating some Republican support, Clinton is getting support from white college-educated voters, particularly women, who usually back Republican presidential nominees.

Those trends could also bode well for Clinton in Pennsylvania, a Democratic stronghold that does not have early voting but offers 20 electoral votes Trump needs. </s> This is gonna be good: Trump and Clinton are poised for a showdown likely to draw a massive audience. Follow our reporters for updates throughout the night.
• Leading candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will face off at 6 p.m. tonight in this election’s first presidential debate.
• The 90-minute, high-stakes debate will be televised on all major networks, but you’ll also be able to watch a live stream right here on this post.
• Play along using our debate bingo cards!
• At 8 p.m., Gov. Jay Inslee and Republican challenger will square off in another debate on local network channels and TVW.

Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are set to square off tonight in a high-stakes, must-see debate. Interest in this year’s election has been high — and Monday night’s 90-minute debate is sure to draw a massive audience.

Trump has nearly overcome the lead Clinton rode out of the Democratic National Convention, according to most polls. A Washington Post-ABC News poll of likely voters has Clinton leading Trump 46 percent to 44 percent. The poll shows Libertarian Party nominee at 5 percent and Green Party nominee Jill Stein at 1 percent.

The New York Times’ Upshot pegs Clinton at 44 percent and Trump at 41 percent. Fivethirtyeight’s poll forecasting puts Clinton’s chances of winning at 51.5 percent and Trump’s 48.5 percent. </s> The allegation, made without evidence, comes as Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote over Trump has surpassed 2 million votes and is expected to grow to more than 2.5 million as ballots in populous states such as California continue to be tallied.

Clinton's legal team said on Saturday it had agreed to participate in a recount of Wisconsin votes after the state's election board approved the effort requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, which Trump has called "ridiculous."

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," Trump tweeted as reporters waited for him to leave his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida to fly back to his residence in New York City.

The U.S. presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, based on a tally of wins from the state-by-state contests, rather than by the national vote. Trump has surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. The Electoral College results are expected to be finalized on Dec. 19.

Trump added he would have won the "so-called popular vote ... easily and convincingly" if the U.S. election was determined that way instead of by the Electoral College.

Before the election, Trump made unsubstantiated allegations that the results of the election might be "rigged" against him.

Since the vote, Trump's message has alternated between appealing for unity and railing against his opponents and the media.

In a video message released ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, Trump said he hoped it would be a time for Americans "to begin to heal our divisions" following a "long and bruising political campaign."

Trump has derided the fundraising effort by Stein to launch recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania as a "scam." Those states had voted Democratic in recent presidential elections but all broke narrowly for the Republican Trump in this month's election. The recounts are not expected to change the results of the election.

Stein, who won about 1 percent of the national vote, has said she wants a recount to guarantee the integrity of the U.S. voting system, a push that came after some experts raised the possibility that hacks could have affected the results.

Democratic President Barack Obama's administration has said there is no evidence of electoral tampering, but experts have said that the only way to verify the results are accurate is to conduct a recount.

Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence have a series of meetings in New York on Monday to interview potential Cabinet members and other advisers. Trump takes office on Jan. 20. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Dustin Volz; Writing by Dustin Volz; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote over Donald Trump rises above 2 million.