2016 Presidential Election (The Future of America)

The United States presidential election of 2016 was the 58th quadrennial American presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana Governor Mike Pence defeated the Democratic ticket of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senator from Virginia Tim Kaine. Trump took office as the 45th President, and Pence as the 48th Vice President, on January 20, 2017. Concurrent with the presidential election, Senate, House, and many gubernatorial and state and local elections were also held on November 8. Voters selected members of the Electoral College in each state, in most cases by "winner-takes-all" plurality; those state electors in turn voted for a new president and vice president on December 19, 2016.[a] While Clinton received about 2.9 million more votes nationwide, a margin of 2.1%, Trump won 30 states worth a total of 306 electors, or 57% of the 538 available. He won the four perennial swing states of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa, (only North Carolina was won by Romney in 2012) as well as the three "blue wall" stronghold states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which had not been won by a Republican presidential candidate in decades. Leading up to the election, a Trump victory was considered unlikely by almost all media forecasts.

In the Electoral College vote on December 19, seven electors voted against their pledged candidates: two against Trump and five against Clinton. A further three electors attempted to vote against Clinton but were replaced or forced to vote again. Ultimately, Trump received 304 electoral votes and Clinton garnered 227, while Colin Powell won three, and John Kasich, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, and Faith Spotted Eagle each received one.

Trump is the fifth person in U.S. history to become president while losing the nationwide popular vote.[b] He is the first president without any prior experience in public service or the military, as well as the wealthiest and the oldest at inauguration, while Clinton was the first woman to be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party and the first woman to win the popular vote.

This was the first time since the 1984 re-election of Ronald Reagan that Wisconsin voted for a Republican, and the first time since 1988 that the Republican nominee won the states of Pennsylvania and Michigan, as well as Maine's second congressional district. It was also the first time since the 1828 election of Andrew Jackson that an electoral vote split occurred in Maine.