President-elect Donald Trump has achieved the highest raw vote count of any Republican presidential candidate in history, according to projections for the 2024 election. As of Sunday morning, Trump had secured 74,650,000 popular votes, surpassing his previous record of 74,224,000 votes in the 2020 election, according to the Associated Press. Currently, this puts Trump ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris, who has 70.9 million votes. However, a significant number of votes remain uncounted, including those in California, where about 66% of the vote has been tallied.
Other states, including Alaska, Arizona, Maryland, Oregon, and Utah, still have outstanding votes, with approximately 5 million votes estimated to be left to count. Republicans have not won the popular vote in a presidential election since 2004, when President George W. Bush received 62 million votes, the New York Post reported.
Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 landslide re-election, won 54 million votes, at a time when the U.S. population was 100 million smaller than it is today. President Biden still holds the record for the largest raw popular vote count in U.S. history, with 81.3 million votes in the 2020 election, though interestingly, the approximately 11 million votes that Harris is shy of Biden’s 2020 total did not show up for Trump, either.
Trump secured a clean sweep of all seven battleground states and won the Electoral College by a margin of 312 to 226, marking the largest victory since 2012, when incumbent President Barack Obama won 332 to 206. For comparison, Trump’s 2016 victory was 304 to 227, while Biden won the Electoral College in 2020 with a 306 to 232 margin. In addition, Republicans have regained control of the Senate and are within reach of holding onto the House of Representatives, The Post added.
The soon-to-be 47th president is only the second in U.S. history to secure a second nonconsecutive term, following Grover Cleveland, a Democrat who served as the 22nd and 24th president starting in 1885. Meanwhile, Trump is in the process of staffing his second administration. On Saturday, he announced that he would not reappoint former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Rather, he has chosen the No. 4 House Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, to be his UN secretary. He’s also chosen former Acting ICE Director Tom Homan to be his “border czar.”
Stefanik has become a key ally of the president-elect. She was one of the first to endorse his presidential comeback campaign and was once seen as a leading contender for the vice presidency. She has also since confirmed that Trump tapped her to represent the U.S. at the UN, and he has done so as well.
“I am truly honored to earn President Trump’s nomination to serve in his Cabinet as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,” Stefanik, who was just reelected to a sixth term, told the New York Post. “During my conversation with President Trump, I shared how deeply humbled I am to accept his nomination and that I look forward to earning the support of my colleagues in the United States Senate. President Trump’s historic landslide election has given hope to the American people and is a reminder that brighter days are ahead — both at home and abroad.”
Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.