President-elect Donald Trump is now the top Republican vote getter in any presidential election in history, surpassing former President George W. Bush’s 2004 victory on Wednesday.
At the same time, his loss in the popular vote count to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues to grow as the final votes are being tallied.
According to the 2016 National Popular Vote Tracker compiled from official sources by David Wasserman and the Cook Political Report, Trump has 62,210,612 votes. In 2004, Bush received 62,040,610 votes in a victory over then-Sen. John Kerry.
At the same time, Clinton’s lead in the popular vote grew to more than 2 million votes.
According to the tracker, Clinton has 64,225,863 votes, accounting for 48.1 percent of the popular vote. Trump’s votes account for 46.6 percent of the popular vote.
The 1.5 percent lead in the popular vote for Clinton would be the greatest margin of popular vote victory for a defeated candidate since Democrat Samuel Tilden beat Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes by 3 percent in the popular vote but lost the election in the House of Representatives in 1876, according to the New York Times.
