Early voting results show Republican Donald Trump is on track to be the next US president – defying polling predictions and despite the fact that Democrat Hillary Clinton looks set to win the popular vote.

Clinton has lost Florida, the most influential of tonight’s contested states. Florida is worth 29 of the 270 votes needed to win the presidency, far more than any other state where the candidates looked like they would be in a close race. Thanks to Florida, Trump’s path to becoming president is considerably less difficult.



Though media attention on the race has focused on just two candidates, there are more. In Florida, results reported by the state’s board of election show that more than 290,000 votes went to third-party candidates. Clinton finished around 133,000 votes behind Trump.

Trump’s win in Florida came despite the state’s large Hispanic population. Nearly one in five eligible Floridian voters is Hispanic, and early voting data suggested that this overwhelmingly Democratic group turned out in higher numbers than they did in 2012. Yet Clinton still lost the state.

By 11.30pm ET, Clinton had won a string of 14 safe Democratic states – California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia – and Washington DC, but together those states and DC only carry 197 electoral college votes.

Election day: the key points as they happen with the votes being tallied Read more

Trump had won 21 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming. Those states are worth 216 electoral college votes.

Clinton was left needing to win the remaining safe Democratic states and all the remaining competitive ones. Even then, that would only get the Democrats to 269 of the 270 electoral college votes needed – so Clinton would need to grab at least one of the states that looked set to vote for Trump. That would be incredibly difficult for her to do.

Since several Democratic wins look set to come in more populous states, it’s likely that Clinton will win a larger share of the popular vote but not become the next US president.

That has happened four times before in US history, most recently in the 2000 election, where Republican George W Bush became president despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore by less than a percentage point.