In the end, it all came down to turnout.

While ballots were still being counted Wednesday morning, the Associated Press reported 118,523,026 ballots were cast across the country in the 2016 election. Democrat Hillary Clinton looked set to win the national popular vote, but a collapse in Democratic turnout handed Donald Trump the presidency through the Electoral College.

More than 231.55 million people were eligible to vote. Nearly half stayed home.

The 2016 turnout numbers show a dismal result for Democrats, who rely on high voter turnout in big elections. According to preliminary numbers from the Associated Press, 7.5 million more people voted in 2012 and almost 13 million more people voted in 2008.

That means that Donald Trump will become the president although he has received about 1.74 million fewer votes than 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

The reason Trump was able to win the presidency with fewer votes is a collapse in the Democratic coalition that sent Barack Obama to the Oval Office twice. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton received about 6.56 million fewer votes than Obama's nearly 66 million votes in 2012.

Exit polls from CBS News showed Trump's appeal to white and male voters of different racial backgrounds may have carried the day for him.

Trump beat Clinton among white women by a similar amount that Romney defeated Obama. However, Clinton received 4 percent less of the white male vote than Obama did in 2012, according to a CBS report.

Trump won among white voters without a college degree 72 percent to 23 percent, won among white women who didn't go to college 62 percent to 34 percent and won white, college-educated men 62 percent to 34 percent. Clinton won college-educated white women 51 percent to 45 percent, the report showed, CBS said.

The exit polls showed Clinton dropped 5 percent with black voters compared with Obama in 2012, including only getting 80 percent of the black male vote. The poll attributed her drop in African-American voters to the decrease in the black male vote.

The poll shows white Republican voters mostly came home to Trump: 91 percent of white Republican women voted for the nominee and 92 percent of white Republican men followed suit. In contrast, Clinton won 86 percent of white Democratic women and 81 percent of white Democratic men.

The poll comes to the conclusion that many votes simply didn't like Clinton.

"In the exit polls, voters were asked whether they strongly favored their candidate, liked their candidate but with reservations, or if they voted because they disliked the other candidate," the report stated. "While 21 percent of Clinton voters said they disliked the other candidates, more – 28 percent – of Trump voters reported that. There appears to have been more people voting against Clinton than against Trump."