simon coveney won the popular vote in the 2017 election.
who won the popular vote in the 2017 election?
simon coveney
as many mathematical analysts have noted, however, the state voting in a fashion most similar to that of the nation as a whole is not necessarily the tipping-point. for example, if a candidate wins only a few states but does so by a wide margin, while the other candidate's victories are much closer, the popular vote would likely favor the former. however, although the vast majority of the states leaned to the latter candidate in comparison to the entire country, many of them would end up having voted for the loser in greater numbers than did the tipping-point state. the presidential election in 2016 was a notable example, as it featured one of the largest historical disparities between the electoral college and popular vote. as the election was quite close, the winner of the electoral college did not capture the popular vote. additionally, this "split" was a lot larger in both directions than in previous, tighter elections, such as the one that took place in the year of 2000. in that election, vice president al gore won the popular vote by less than 1 percent, while incoming president george w. bush won the electoral college by only 4 votes. in contrast, 2016 democratic nominee hillary clinton won the popular vote by over 2 percentage points. this meant that donald trump would have picked up new hampshire, nevada, and minnesota if the popular vote had been tied, assuming a uniform shift among the battleground states. on the other hand, clinton would have had to win the popular vote by at least 3 points in order to win the electoral college, as trump, the republican nominee, won the tipping-point state of wisconsin by less than 1 percent.
swing state
since 1824, aside from the occasional "faithless elector", the popular vote determines the winner of a presidential election by determining the electoral vote, as each state or district's popular vote determines its electoral college vote. although the nationwide popular vote does not directly determine the winner of a presidential election, it does strongly correlate with who is the victor. in 53 of the 58 total elections held so far (about 91 percent), the winner of the national popular vote has also carried the electoral college vote. the winners of the nationwide popular vote and the electoral college vote differ only in close elections. in highly competitive elections, candidates focus on turning out their vote in the contested swing states critical to winning an electoral college majority, so they do not try to maximize their popular vote by real or fraudulent vote increases in one-party areas.
united states presidential election