President-elect Donald Trump has already sealed a comfortable majority in the Electoral College. But he is also on course to do something he didn’t do in his first successful campaign for the White House: win the popular vote.

The latest count, as of Thursday morning, suggests that Trump will win more votes nationally in the presidential election than his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, making him the first Republican to prevail in the popular vote in 20 years.

Although votes were still being counted in some states, Trump had received more than 72.6 million votes, against around 68 million for Harris, a gap of around 4.6 million votes.

The last Republican presidential candidate to win more votes than his opponent was then-President George W. Bush in 2004, when he won reelection against John Kerry.

The tally is a further measure of the scale of Trump’s win and another blow to Democrats.

The consensus among pollsters before Election Day was that Trump and Harris would run neck and neck in the Electoral College votes that decided the presidency, but Harris would gain more votes overall.

The assumption was partly based on recent elections. In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore but prevailed in the Electoral College. In the 2016 election, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, but she gained nearly 3 million more votes nationally than he did.

At the same time, Trump has so far gained approximately 1.5 million fewer votes in 2024 than he did during his defeat in 2020. In 2016, by contrast, he gained around 63 million votes, which is around 13% less than he did in this year’s election.