Who won the popular vote? U.S. election vote totals from the past 40 years

Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency and as of Wednesday morning, was also ahead in the popular vote. While the two may seem to go hand in hand, historically, the candidate with the most votes hasn’t always won the election.

In fact, two of the last seven elections have been won by a candidate who garnered fewer votes than their opponent. That includes Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, where she beat Donald Trump by 2.1 percentage points — almost three million votes — but failed to win enough electoral votes.

In fact, between 1992 and 2020, the Democrats only lost the popular vote once but lost three elections in that span. Trump is the first Republican to lead the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004, with the party having lost the vote in seven of the eight previous elections.

Below are popular vote totals and winners for the past 40 years of U.S. presidential elections.

NOTE: Vote totals for 2024 are still being tallied and will be updated periodically.

As of Thursday afternoon, at least eight states still had less than 80 per cent of votes counted.

For example, California has counted approximately 10 million votes, which is only 55 per cent of their total votes, according to the Associated Press.