Para leer en español, vea esta traducción de El Tiempo Latino.
Quick Take
President-elect Donald Trump is the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote in 20 years. Social media users have wrongly claimed that Trump lost the popular vote, but they are confusing the popular vote with a majority of votes. The unofficial results show Trump received slightly less than a majority, but more votes than any candidate.
Full Story
On Nov. 6, the Associated Press called the 2024 election for President-elect Donald Trump. Trump won 312 electoral votes to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 226 votes.
While ballots are still being counted in some states, Trump very likely also won the popular vote, with 76.9 million votes compared with 74.4 million for Harris. Trump is the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote since President George W. Bush in 2004.
But some social media users have claimed Trump didn’t actually win the popular vote.
A Nov. 24 post on Threads shared the claim, writing, “Donald Trump losing the popular vote by 2% and only won because of the electoral college means that he is a DEI president.” (DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion.)
Another user shared the claim in a now-deleted Instagram post from Nov. 24, which read, “DONALD J. TRUMP OFFICIALLY LOST THE 2024 POPULAR VOTE FOR POTUS.”
In comments, the user explained that since Trump did not receive at least 50% of all votes cast, he had lost the popular vote.
But this is a misunderstanding of how the popular vote is measured.
In order to win the popular vote, a candidate must only receive more votes than any other single candidate — that is, a plurality of votes. They need not win the majority of all votes cast.
Barry C. Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained to us in a Nov. 25 email, “Trump has not won an outright majority of the popular vote; that would require surpassing the 50% threshold. He has won a large plurality, which means that he attracted more votes than each of his opponents, but he is just short of a true majority.”
On election night, it seemed that Trump had won a majority of votes. But as more votes were counted, Trump’s vote total fell to 49.9% of all votes cast and Harris received 48.3%, as of Nov. 26.
Two third-party candidates — Jill Stein and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — received more than 750,000 votes each. As a result, neither Trump nor Harris achieved a majority of votes.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Meta to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Meta has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
Associated Press. “2024 Presidential Election Results.” 26 Nov 2024.
Burden, Barry C. Professor of political science, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Email to FactCheck.org. 25 Nov 2024.
Decision 2024. “2024 President Results: Trump wins.” Accessed 26 Nov 2024.
Ellis, Niquel Terry. “What is DEI and why is it dividing America?” CNN. 11 Mar 2024.
Google. 2024 Election Results. Presidential results. Accessed 26 Nov 2024.
Jachim, Nick. “When was the last time the Republican Party won the popular vote?” The Hill. 6 Nov 2024.
Yoon, Robert. “Why AP called Wisconsin and the White House for Donald Trump.” Associated Press. 6 Nov 2024.
Google. 2024 Election Results.