Donald Trumpwon the U.S. election Tuesday night by securing the electoral vote, but he lost the popular vote to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Many are pointing out comments Trump said regarding the U.S. voting process back in 2012. Just after Obama won, Trump posted a series of tweets citing voting irregularities and slamming the U.S. electoral system. "The electoral college is a disaster for democracy," he tweeted back on election day in 2012. That year, Obama clearly won the electoral college, and narrowly won the populate vote against Mitt Romney. He later deleted most of his tweets on the subject.
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
It's an interesting comment to look back on given the results of Tuesday night's race. In the case of Trump's election, neither he nor Clinton earned 50 percent of the vote. As of noon Wednesday, Trump held 47.5 percent of the popular vote while Clinton held 47.7. However, Trump won the election when he reached the 270 electoral vote threshold at 2:31 a.m. ET Wednesday morning.
The Electoral College is set up in a way that a candidate can theoretically win the presidency with less than 30 percent of the popular vote, according to NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben. This outcome, where a nominee has won after losing the popular vote, has only occurred five times in the country's history as outlined by NPR. Many are familiar with the most recent occurrence which happened in the 2000 election when Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote, but George Bush ultimately won the presidency. This same outcome happened only three other times and all back in the 1800s: 1888, 1876, and 1824.
Despite the obvious split among the country, Trump, Clinton, and sitting President Barack Obama encouraged the nation to come together in their respective speeches after Tuesday's results. "We're not Democrats first. We're not Republicans first. We are Americans first. We're patriots first. We all want what's best for this country," Obama said during his speech. You can keep up with all of Complex's latest coverage on the election right here.
