“I would have done even better in the election, if that is possible, if the winner was based on popular vote," Donald Trump tweeted. | AP Photo Trump claims he could have also won the popular vote, if he wanted to 'I would have done even better in the election, if that is possible, if the winner was based on popular vote - but would campaign differently,' Trump tweeted. 
 
 Even after officially winning the Electoral College vote this week, Donald Trump is still litigating his presidential victory, firing off a fresh set of tweets on Wednesday claiming he could have also won the popular vote if he had wanted to. 
 
 “Campaigning to win the Electoral College is much more difficult & sophisticated than the popular vote. Hillary focused on the wrong states!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday morning. That post went up minutes after an initial post with similar language was put up and then quickly deleted from Trump’s account. 
 
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 “I would have done even better in the election, if that is possible, if the winner was based on popular vote — but would campaign differently,” Trump wrote in the second of his three-post Twitter flurry on Wednesday. “I have not heard any of the pundits or commentators discussing the fact that I spent FAR LESS MONEY on the win than Hillary on the loss!” he continued in the third. 
 
 The Manhattan billionaire handily won last month’s presidential election, a victory certified this week when the Electoral College officially voted him to be the nation’s next commander in chief. But those otherwise victorious moments have been clouded by the fact that it was Democrat Hillary Clinton, not Trump, who won the nationwide popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots. 
 
 That his win was anything other than resounding has seemingly created an itch that Trump has been unable to resist scratching. 
 
 It is not the first time Trump has used Twitter to bolster his Electoral College victory. Late last month, Trump wrote on Twitter that “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” a baseless claim that he did not back with any evidence. Hours later, he added, again without evidence, that there had been “Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California — so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias — big problem!” 
 
 Trump officially won the Electoral College on Monday when 304 of his earned 306 electors cast ballots for him, with just two defectors in Texas casting votes for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), respctively. After a last-ditch effort to mount an Electoral College challenge to Trump, it was Clinton who hemorrhaged more electoral votes, albeit in an election she was certain to lose. 
 
 Clinton’s ultimately meaningless popular vote victory came largely thanks to California, the nation’s most populous state and among its most liberal, where Trump lost by more than 4 million votes. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of Trump’s most vocal supporters and prominent surrogates during the campaign, noted Wednesday morning on Fox News that without California, where the president-elect did not campaign because it was certain to land in Clinton’s column, the popular vote would have matched the Electoral College result. 
 
 “Look, this is the football season. A team can have more yards and lose the game. What matters is how many points you put on the board. The Electoral College is the points,” Gingrich said. “Ironically, the amateur understood the Electoral College mattered. The so-called professional forgot the Electoral College mattered, and that’s what mattered.” 
 
 Despite the popular vote loss, Trump’s team has sought to characterize his Electoral College win — which came thanks to narrow wins in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — as a landslide that handed the incoming administration a mandate to govern as it sees fit. But according to PolitiFact, Trump’s percentage of the Electoral College was lower than that of 12 post-World War II winners and bigger than that of just five. Democrats have argued that without the popular vote, Trump’s win was anything but a mandate. 
 
 Former President Bill Clinton scoffed at the notion that Trump might have such a mandate when he takes office next month, telling The Record-Review, a small weekly newspaper in Westchester County, New York, that his victory in 1992 had been a true landslide. 
 
 “Landslide? I got something like 370 electoral votes,” Clinton said in the interview published last Friday, recalling his 1992 total. “That was a landslide.” 
 
 Of course, Clinton won in 1992 thanks at least in part to independent candidate Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire who launched an independent White House bid that siphoned votes away from incumbent President George H.W. Bush. Clinton won reelection in 1996 with an even greater Electoral Vote total of 379. 
 
 In that same local newspaper interview, which took place in a small bookstore, Clinton told the reporter that Trump “doesn’t know much” but that “one thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him.” The president-elect took issue with that phrase, using it as another opportunity to attack the Clinton campaign for its inability to win despite numerous advantages. 
 
 “He ‘doesn't know much,’ especially how to get people, even with an unlimited budget, out to vote in the vital swing states (and more),” Trump said on Tuesday of Clinton in a message that spanned two posts to Twitter. “They focused on wrong states.” ||||| Republican and president-elect Donald Trump's loss in the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton continues to grow nearly a week after he won the Electoral College vote, according to the latest tallies. Clinton now holds a 668,483 lead over the next president, with 61,039,676 votes to Trump’s 60,371,193, according to CNN. 
 
 Clinton has seen her lead steadily climb in the last six days since shockingly losing the Electoral College to Trump 290-232. On Friday, Clinton’s lead was a little more than 395,000 votes. The latest vote count shows she is beating Democrat Al Gore's grand total when he won the popular vote to George W. Bush in 2000, but ultimately lost the Electoral College vote. 
 
 As states still gather their final tallies, Clinton’s lead figures to grow even more. It’s possible Clinton will wind up with 2 million more votes than Trump, a 1.5 percentage point advantage, the New York Times reported. 
 
 Trump, speaking with his wife and children on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, chatted with interviewer Lesley Stahl about tweets he wrote during the campaign that claimed the electoral college is a “disaster for democracy” and that the election process is “rigged.” Trump hinted that he may understand the outcry from Clinton supporters about making the popular vote the primary factor in the presidential election. 
 
 “I hated-- well, you know, I’m not going to change my mind just because I won,” Trump said. “But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win." 
 
 Millions of voters, including pop singers Lady Gaga, Pink and Sia want Republican electors to honor the popular vote and deliver the White House to Clinton. Critics claim the Electoral College favors states that once owned slaves. 
 
 "Most of us are taught that the Electoral College was designed to dilute democracy by forcing voters to choose independent electors, who then chose a president. That is true, but it’s only part of the story. The system was also designed to accommodate and preserve slavery, the ultimate tool of white supremacy—and later served to delay universal women’s suffrage," Slate wrote. ||||| Story highlights Trump won the Electoral College 
 
 But he trails Clinton in the popular vote by about two million 
 
 Washington (CNN) President-elect Donald Trump alleged Sunday, without evidence, that "millions of people" voted illegally for Hillary Clinton and otherwise he would have won the popular vote. It's an unprecedented allegation by a president-elect. 
 
 Trump won the Electoral College and thus the White House, but the Democratic nominee leads him in the popular vote by about two million ballots. 
 
 "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," Trump tweeted. 
 
 In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016 
 
 "It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4- states instead of the 15 states that I visited. I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)!" he added. 
 
 It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4-- — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016 
 
 states instead of the 15 states that I visited. I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016 
 
 This is the first time he has alleged voter fraud in his own victory and there is no evidence of any widespread voter fraud. 
 
 Read More ||||| Drew Angerer/Getty Images 
 
 Update, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2 p.m. ET: It's now all but certain that Hillary Clinton will win the popular vote. Click here for more. 
 
 Original post, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 11:45 p.m. ET: As of 11:45 p.m. EST on Tuesday, the New York Times’ live forecast projected a Trump victory with greater than 95 percent confidence. At the same time, it projected roughly a 1 percentage point victory for Clinton in the popular vote, even as Trump led in the early returns. 
 
 At the moment, we believe there's a 66% chance of a Democratic win in the popular vote and a Trump win in the Electoral College — Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) November 9, 2016 
 
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 This should sound awfully familiar to Democrats. The last candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election was Al Gore in 2000. It happened just three times prior to that, all in the 1800s. 
 
 Will Oremus Will Oremus is Slate’s senior technology writer. Email him at will.oremus@slate.com or follow him on Twitter. 
 
 It would be scant consolation to Clinton or her supporters, but a popular vote win would still be a historic landmark: It would make her the first woman to win the most votes in a U.S. presidential election. 
 
 If Clinton does become the next winner who also lost, the simplest way to explain it will be to look at the three most populous states in the nation: California, Texas, and New York. Clinton will win both California and New York by wide margins, racking up millions of votes that have no effect on the number of electoral votes she receives. The Times is projecting margins of greater than 20 percent for Clinton in both states. In contrast, Trump’s projected margin in Texas—the largest red state by far—is a more modest 10 percent. 
 
 If few had discussed this possibility ahead of the election, it was probably because most models projected Clinton to win both the popular vote and the Electoral College. That said, FiveThirtyEight had noted for some time that Clinton was more vulnerable in the Electoral College than in the popular vote, and Nate Silver elaborated on that Tuesday night: 
 
 According to our polls-only model, Clinton was projected to win the Electoral College in only 59 percent of cases where she won the popular vote by 1 to 2 percentage points, as she may eventually do tonight once all votes are counted. And she was projected to win it only a quarter of the time when she won the popular vote by less than 1 point. ||||| Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump believes millions of votes were cast illegally in last year's election, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Tuesday, but he wouldn't provide any concrete evidence for the claim, which has long been debunked. 
 
 "The President does believe that, I think he's stated that before, and stated his concern of voter fraud and people voting illegally during the campaign and continues to maintain that belief based on studies and evidence people have brought to him," Spicer said. 
 
 Pressed for what evidence exists, Spicer would say only that Trump "has believed that for a while based on studies and information he has." 
 
 When pushed about whether Trump will call for an investigation into the voter fraud, Spicer said, "maybe we will." 
 
 Trump surprised the top Republicans and Democrats in Congress on Monday when, during a dinner at the White House, he repeated his claim that millions of undocumented immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton -- allegedly depriving him of the popular vote, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. 
 
 Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes in November, but won the Electoral College and thus the presidency. Trump, however, has seemingly been fixated on the popular vote, tweeting after the election in November that, "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." 
 
 A number of studies have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. 
 
 The Truth About Voter Fraud, a report written by experts at The Brennan Center for Justice, found voter fraud rates were between 0.00004% and 0.0009%. 
 
 "Given this tiny incident rate for voter impersonation fraud, it is more likely that an American will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls," reads the report. 
 
 Trump's lawyers -- in an objection to Green Party candidate Jill Stein's Michigan recount petition -- have also argued that there was no evidence voter fraud in the 2016 election. 
 
 "All available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake," the lawyers wrote in a filing. 
 
 South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham slammed Trump earlier Tuesday over the claim. 
 
 "I wasn't there, but if the President of the United States is claiming that 3.5 million people voted illegally, that shakes confidence in our democracy — he needs to disclose why he believes that," Graham told CNN. 
 
 JUST WATCHED Trump renews false claim of illegal ballots Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Trump renews false claim of illegal ballots 03:04 
 
 Spicer said Tuesday that Trump believes in widespread voter fraud, in part, because of a study that found 14% of people who voted were non-citizens. 
 
 Spicer did not say expressly which study Trump has read, but a 2014 study by Jesse Richman and David Earnest found more than 14% of non-citizens in 2008 and 2010 "indicated that they were registered to vote." 
 
 The authors wrote, in a Washington Post opinion piece, the report showed "that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010." 
 
 The study was designed by Cooperative Congressional Election Study, and in 2014 the group said their sample was so small that it could be incorrect and attributable to normal survey error and not non-citizens saying that they are registered to vote. 
 
 Trump's campaign cited in October a 2012 study from the Pew Charitable Trusts entitled "Inaccurate, Costly and Inefficient: Evidence that American Voter Registration Systems Needs an Upgrade" as backup for that claim. The study found that "about 24 million voter registrations are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate" and "more than 1.8 million dead people are listed as voters." 
 
 The study, which is based on 2011 data, is about the need to update voter rolls and underscores deficiencies in the voter registration system, but does not show that people who have registrations in two states are voting twice for Democrats or for Republicans. 
 
 We found millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying, but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted. — David Becker (@beckerdavidj) November 28, 2016 
 
 David Becker, the primary author of the Pew Report, tweeted in November, "We found millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying, but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted."
– Donald Trump is known to occasionally think out loud on Twitter, and on Wednesday the president-elect processed his Electoral College victory, which he won by 304 votes to Hillary Clinton's 227. Trump started off by tweeting at 8:15am EST: "Campaigning to win the Electoral College is much more difficult & sophisticated than the popular vote. Hillary focused on the wrong states!" After allowing people to digest that, Trump moved on to postulate how things might have gone in a different political universe. "I would have done even better in the election, if that is possible, if the winner was based on popular vote—but would campaign differently," he mused 10 minutes later, without elaborating. This isn't the first time Trump has taken on the election results on Twitter, notes Politico, which points out the Electoral College win is not exactly the "landslide" Trump's people have claimed, that Clinton claimed the popular vote (by almost 3 million at last glance), and that the fact "that his win was anything other than resounding has seemingly created an itch that Trump has been unable to resist scratching." At any rate, he didn't wait much longer to wrap up what Politico calls his "three-post Twitter flurry," switching it up to discuss campaign spending. "I have not heard any of the pundits or commentators discussing the fact that I spent FAR LESS MONEY on the win than Hillary on the loss!" he concluded. (A recent tweet was "unpresidented.")