United States Presidential election 2016 — Results
Election day: November 8, 2016
- Hillary Clinton (Democratic): 48.18%, 227 seats
- Donald Trump (Republican): 46.09%, 304 seats
- Gary Johnson (Libertarian): 3.28%
- Jill Stein (Green): 1.07%
- Evan McMullin (Independent): 0.54%
Turnout: 60.10%
About this election
The electoral system
Americans do not elect their president directly. Each state is allotted electors equal to its number of senators (two) plus representatives, for 538 in total, and a candidate needs 270 to win. Every state except Maine and Nebraska awards all of its electors to the statewide winner, so the contest is effectively decided in a handful of competitive "swing" states. In 2016 Maine split its votes for the first time, with Trump taking one elector from its second congressional district while Clinton carried the state overall.
Compiled and reviewed from official results by ElectioMap. See our data methodology.
In numbers
- -2.09 points separated Donald Trump (Republican) from Hillary Clinton (Democratic) — -2,868,686 votes.
- Donald Trump (Republican) converted 46.09% of the vote into 304 of 538 seats (56.51%), 10.42 points more than its vote share.
- The top two shared 94.27% of the vote between them, and 2 lists cleared 5%.
- Turnout of 60.10% is the lowest of the 3 presidential elections covered here since 2016.
Calculated from the official figures on this page and from the other elections of this type in our archive.
Understanding this election
- Why Official Results Sometimes Take Weeks — the stages between the count and the legal result
- Why Election Maps Look Different From the Popular Vote — why a map can look one-sided when the vote was close
- How a Constituency Map Gets Built — what happens when no boundary file matches the districts