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Of course, the winner of the popular vote is meaningless anyway, because that's not how the election works.

• dllthomas 10y ago
  Somewhat agreed. There is a difference between "has no procedural effect" and "meaningless" - it does speak to popular opinion slightly more forcefully than other polls.
  • mzw_mzw 10y ago
    Not really. In a counterfactual world where the winner of the national popular vote became President, the candidates would have campaigned differently. So it's impossible to say what the alternate result would have been.
    • dllthomas 10y ago
      I'm not sure what that counterfactual has to do with anything here. It would be relevant if I were saying "clearly we should ignore the electoral college and hand the election to Hillary." I'm not. I'm saying Trump has a bit less of a mandate, losing the popular vote by a small margin, than he would have had if he'd won the popular vote by a small margin, and much less than if he'd won the popular vote by a huge margin. Yes, the numbers would have been different if popular vote had been the chief objective, but... so what?