President Donald Trump has received more popular votes than any of his predecessors, with over 70 million and counting as of Friday afternoon, breaking the previous record set by Barack Obama in 2008 by over 500,000.
However, unofficial election results also show Democrat candidate Joe Biden leads the incumbent with more popular votes than any U.S. president in history, shattering his old boss Obama’s 2008 record (69,498,516) by nearly 4.5 million ballots and counting.
Breitbart News gleaned the unofficial Biden (73,982,123) and Trump (70,036,848) tallies as of 7:00 p.m. Friday from the Associated Press (AP) and Obama’s 2008 official count from the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).
With the count still ongoing, Trump, as of Friday afternoon, had gotten over 500,000 more votes than former President Obama in 2008.
Pollster Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight predicted that Trump would surpass Obama’s 2008 popular vote total by more than five million, adding that former Vice President Biden would break the record by a more significant margin.
“It probably works out to Biden getting 52-ish percent of the popular vote on a turnout of 155 million-ish votes, which would be around 80 million,” He wrote on Twitter. “Trump might get say 73-75 million.”
Trump has blasted the pre-election polls for underestimating his support by large margins.
On Wednesday, CNBC reported that the projected popular vote total of at least 159.8 million represented a record high in a presidential election and the “highest voter turnout rate among eligible citizens since 1900,” adding:
Overall, Democrats had an early vote advantage heading into Election Day with 43% of early or absentee votes compared with Republicans’ 37%. While more Democrats than Republicans voted early by mail, more GOP voters cast ballots early in person than Democrats.
Fueled by record absentee balloting, several states, including South Carolina and battleground Michigan, saw historic voter turnout.
Despite the popular vote, a candidate must have 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.
As of Friday afternoon, neither Biden nor Trump had reached that total with several states counting votes.
Trump has watched his Election Day margins disappear as more Democrat late-counted votes trickle in in critical battleground states.
In response, he vowed to take legal action to challenge election results in crucial swing states.
The president believes mail-in voting has opened the election to fraud. Democrats and their mainstream media allies have deemed the claim to be baseless.
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