Had last week's presidential election hinged on the popular vote, Donald Trump would have adjusted his strategy, he wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. | Getty Trump: I would have won popular vote if I needed to

Had last week’s presidential election hinged on the popular vote, Donald Trump would have adjusted his strategy and “won even bigger and more easily,” the president-elect wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning.

While Trump won a resounding victory in the electoral college, he was actually bested in the popular vote by Hillary Clinton, who won populous states like California, New York and Illinois by wide margins. And while Democrats have been, to varying degrees, conciliatory in the days since Trump’s victory, some have been quick to needle him with the fact that more Americans actually voted for his opponent.


That argument, that Trump would have lost if not for the intricacies of the Electoral College, does not hold water, according to the Manhattan billionaire.

“If the election were based on total popular vote, I would have campaigned in N.Y., Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily,” he wrote on Twitter.

The president-elect easily cleared the 270 vote threshold in the Electoral College with wins swing states like Ohio, Florida and North Carolina as well as in traditionally blue states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But as of Tuesday morning, he still trailed his Democratic opponent in the popular vote, 61,845,761 to 60,882,946, a margin of 962,815 votes. Trump lost California by nearly 3 million votes and New York by just over 1.5 million votes. Those two states last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1988 and 1984, respectively.

Minutes after his first tweet Tuesday morning, Trump added another, writing that “the Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!”

Trump was not always so fond of the Electoral College.

On election night in 2012, Trump ranted about the Electoral College when he appeared to believe, incorrectly, that President Barack Obama lost the popular vote to Mitt Romney.

“He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!” Trump wrote that night, continuing in a subsequent post that "the electoral college is a disaster for a democracy."

“The phoney electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!” he added [sic].

“More votes equals a loss … revolution!”