​Hillary Clinton actually got more votes than Donald Trump – but he still won the election

Hillary Clinton actually got more votes than Donald Trump – but because of the electoral system, he won the presidency.

Clinton has become the fifth US presidential candidate to finish ahead of her rival in the popular vote, but to still lose the election overall.

As of 3pm GMT, Clinton had won 59,299,381 votes nationally. Trump, however, had only won 59,135,740 – 163,641 votes less than the Democratic candidate.

This is because of how the US electoral system works – in theory, according to NPR’s calculations, it could be possible to win a US presidential election with less than 30% of the popular vote.

So how does the US election system work?

In the US, candidates are competing to get the most electoral votes rather than most of the popular vote.

Each state in the Electoral College has a certain number of electoral votes.

If a candidate gets the majority of popular votes in a state, they win *all* of that state’s electoral votes. Even if they only win in that state by one vote, they get the whole pie.

So, in this way, a candidate like Trump can win entire states with really narrow majorities.