Trump is taking a thrashing in the popular vote — despite Electoral College tightness

In 2016, Donald Trump became president of the United States by receiving 2,868,691 less votes than Hillary Clinton. At the time, Clinton took 48.5% of the popular vote to Trump's 46.4%. With rampant Republican voter suppression over the past four years and a Republican-induced out-of-control pandemic in our country, how many people would and could vote in 2020 was in question. We all suspected that turnout would be high. Could it be as high as the record-setting 66,862,039 that voted for Barack Obama in 2008, when he defeated Republican Sen. John McCain?

With over 101 million early votes cast, projections that Tuesday's election would be the highest turnout—around 160 million or 67% of the eligible electorate—in American history seemed secure. As of Wednesday and the time of this story, Joe Biden has received 70,037,467 counted votes, or 50.2% of the popular vote, to Donald Trump's 67,013,920 . So far, 3,023,547 more people voted for Joe Biden than Trump.

While the Electoral College is set up to stifle the size of the shellacking Trump is taking, the final numbers project to be even more egregiously in favor of Biden.

The heartening part of this all is that even with the Republican Party working tirelessly to gerrymander and disenfranchise our democracy out of existence, Americans have come out, and continue to come out in greater numbers.