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Thursday, 17 November 2016

Meme Deconstruction: Has Trump won the popular vote

I've seen a large number of people posting on Twitter and Quora that Donald Trump has won the popular vote and not Hilary Clinton and the only reason it is not reported on Wikipedia or Mainstream Media is liberal bias and/or general liberal upset.

In this post I intend on evaluating a few of these claims. Drill down to where the data comes from and work out if it has any validity. This article does not argue for or against Donald Trump winning the popular vote. Left, Right or Centralist - It is vital that we can have honest, truthful conversations about what happened.


This post will not evaluate other content on each of these web pages, just any claim that Donald Trump has won the popular vote.


70News: STILL PENDING! FINAL ELECTION 2016 NUMBERS: TRUMP WON BOTH POPULAR ( 62.9 M -62.2 M ) AND ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES ( 306-232)…HEY CHANGE.ORG, SCRAP YOUR LOONY PETITION NOW!

The source given from this a Tweet by @Koxinga8. This Tweet has no backing source and Koxinga8 offers no bonafides as an election official. Put simply this tweet appears to have been made up.

HotTreadingNews: Final 2016 Election Numbers

This uses the "70News" as its source, which I have just show to be unreliable.

RumorMillNews.com: FINAL ELECTION 2016 NUMBERS: TRUMP WON BOTH POPULAR ( 62.9 M -62.2 M ) AND ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES ( 306-232)

This uses the "70News" as its source, which I have just show to be unreliable.

Breaking Radio: Breaking final election 2016 Numbers

This uses the following two as sources, but neither actually support its position. The latter actually supports that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.
Truthfeed: Its Confirmed Michigan Goes Red

This does not quote its sources, however the details do match New York Times (NYTimes has been updated since, but Michigan is still red). It how does not claim that Donald Trump has won the popular vote nation wide, just in that he has in Michigan (which appears to be correct).

The Gateway Pundit: Trump Landslide by the Numbers Her Crushed Hillary

This article does not claim that Trump won the popular vote but that without two states - California (the largest US state representing 12.18% of the population of America) and New York (the fourth largest US state, representing 6.16% of the population of America) that Donald Trump would of won. If you ignore 18% of the population then yes the results would be different. 


These two appear to be syndicated as they are almost identical.
Offers no source for its numbers, one of the screenshots even has Hillary in the lead. It appears to be referencing in passing The Gateway Pundit which as mentioned above does not claim Trump won.

Malaysiaoutlook: Donald Trump Actually Won Big
Does not provide a link to the source, but mentions ETF News. I can not find the article which backs up this claim. The numbers however match that of 70News, which I have shown to be unreliable.


None of the sources above show that Donald Trump has won the popular vote. At the moment the majority of the Mainstream Media (including Fox News) is putting Hillary in lead for the popular vote but it is important to remember that the only source of absolute truth is the FEC. Who have not yet released the results. 

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