Clinton’s lead in the popular vote has been widening from a few thousand votes to millions as people continued protested for the fifth day straight since the elections.
Hillary Clinton has so far secured a 1.8-million-vote lead over President-elect Donald Trump in the popular vote of the U.S. elections, a significant lead that would boost calls for ending the controversial electoral college system that landed the real estate billionaire in the White House.
Nate Cohn, a columnist the New York Times said that as of Saturday there were a total of 7 million votes left to be counted nationwide, many of them in states where the Democratic Party has large support bases such as California and New York.
“By the time all the ballots are counted, she seems likely to be ahead by more than 2 million votes and more than 1.5 percentage points, according to my Times colleague Nate Cohn,” David Leonhardt wrote in a column Saturday.
Clinton “will have won by a wider percentage margin than not only Al Gore in 2000 but also Richard Nixon in 1968 and John F. Kennedy in 1960,” he added.
Cohn also estimated that when all votes have been counted, 63.4 million Americans will have voted for the former secretary of state to 61.2 million for Trump, which would make it the highest votes received by a presidential candidate in history after Obama in both 2008 and 2012.
The news comes as thousands have taken to the streets across U.S. cities to reject Trump’s presidency.
On Tuesday the former reality TV star finished with 306 electoral college votes to Clinton’s 232, easily exceeding the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. However from the minute he was declared the winner, Trump trailed Clinton by a few thousand votes and her popular vote lead has been widening ever since.
The protests against Trump and the flawed Electoral College system have continued for the fifth straight day, with the largest ones being reported in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago and a host of spontaneous protests in smaller cities and towns throughout the country.
The demonstrations are largely being led by people of color and immigrants in the U.S., which Trump has called “professional protesters” inciting by the media.