TV networks are reporting Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote, while President-elect Donald Trump won the electoral college, thus claiming the White House.
At 8 a.m. EST Wednesday, the Associated Press showed Clinton with 59.16 million votes nationally, compared to Trump's 59 million votes.
The final count of remaining precincts won't change the fact that Clinton won the popular vote. That's done. The margin is small -- with only 0.2 percentage points between the two candidates, but the result is set: Clinton has recorded more votes than Trump.
It's a result that mimics the 2000 results, the only other time in the nation's history that the presidential loser won the popular vote. In 2000, remember, Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the White House.
How does the Electoral College system work?
Again, the U.S. president is not directly chosen by voters, but by ‘electors’ that people in a state vote for.
The more people in a state, the more electors an area has. For example, Texas has a population of 25 million and is afforded 38 Electoral College votes, while Delaware has a population of 936,000 and has only three votes.
There are 538 electors in total, corresponding to 435 members of Congress, 100 senators and three additional electors for the District of Columbia. They will meet in their respective states on Dec. 19 to ultimately elect the president.
Almost every state chooses to allocate all its Electoral College votes to whoever comes in first place statewide, regardless of their margin of victory.
Whoever gets to 270 electoral votes first -- the majority of the 578 total votes -- wins the election. And this time it was Trump, 279 electoral votes to Clinton's 228 electoral votes.
To learn more about the Electoral College, click here.
Our question to you now is this:
