Hillary Clinton 2 million votes ahead of Donald Trump

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Donald Trump continues to spend his days ensconced in Trump Tower as he puts together his government. All the while, the lead enjoyed over him in the popular vote by his rival Hillary Clinton, continues to grow.

On Wednesday, it emerged that Ms Clinton’s margin of victory over Mr Trump in the popular vote had now passed two million people.

Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said Ms Clinton had now collected 64,223,958 votes, compared to Mr Trump’s 62,206,395.

Ms Clinton’s scale of victory over Mr Trump in the popular vote is larger than the previous occasions in US history where the person who won the popular vote, lost the Electoral College.

Other presidential hopefuls who won the popular vote but lost the election include Democrat Al Gore in 2000, Democratic-Republican Andrew Jackson in 1824, Democrat Samuel Tilden in 1876 and Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1888.

Before this year, Mr Gore had the record for presidential losers who won the popular vote. He beat Republican George W Bush by 543,816.

A week after his historic election, Mr Trump tweeted: “The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!”

In 2012, he appeared to have a different view.

“The Electoral College is a disaster for a democracy,” Mr Trump said, when Mr Obama beat Mitt Romney.

Last week, Mr Trump also said on Twitter: “If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in NY, Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily.”

Politico said that California senator Barbara Boxer last week introduced legislation last week to abolish the Electoral College. The long-shot bid is not expected to clear the GOP-controlled Congress, though.

Meanwhile, a group of computer scientists and lawyers have urged Ms Clinton to challenge the election results in three key states after they gathered evidence to suggest the election results were potentially manipulated.

The group of activists, including voting rights lawyer John Bonifaz and J Alex Halderman, director of the University of Michigan’s centre for computer security and society, believe the information they have collated, shows that results in these three battleground states - which lost Ms Clinton the election on 8 November - might have been hacked.

A report in New York Magazine said the group was not speaking on the record but was privately lobbying the losing Democrat’s team to challenge the election results. Ms Clinton has not commented publicly on the development.