Majority in national popular vote chose Trump | Fact check

A Nov. 12 Threads post (direct link, archive link) compares the vote counts for President-elect Donald Trump to all the other candidates combined.
“It’s now official – in the 2024 election, more people voted against Donald Trump than voted for him,” reads the post.
It was shared more than 800 times in two days.
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Trump received 50.2% of all votes cast for president, according to The Associated Press’ running count as of Nov. 14. – meaning more people voted for him than against him. The vote totals as of Nov. 12, when this claim was made, also showed Trump outpolling the field.
The post came a week after Trump defeated Harris in the presidential election, winning 312 electoral votes compared to Harris’ 226.
But contrary to the Threads post’s claim, Trump also had the majority in the national popular vote.
According to the AP’s vote tracker, as of Nov. 14 Trump received 50.2% of the votes with a total of 75.9 million votes. Meanwhile, Harris had 72.9 million votes, or 48.2%. NBC News reported slightly less than 2.7 million third-party votes, while The Cook Political Report had that figure closer to 2.5 million. In either case, adding the third-party tallies to Harris’ total still fell short of Trump, who is leading Harris by about 3 million votes.
Archived election results also show Trump garnered more votes than Harris and third-party candidates combined as of Nov. 12, when this claim was made.
Other outlets’ tallies were similar, but not identical. In all cases, the combined vote totals for Harris and all other candidates fell short of the number of ballots cast for Trump.
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If Trump’s lead holds after all ballots are counted, he would be the first Republican since George W. Bush in 2004 to win the national popular vote. It’s electoral votes, however, that determine who wins the presidential race.
USA TODAY has debunked an array of claims related to the election, including false assertions that it marked Trump’s third election win, that 115,000 Michigan voters cast almost 280,000 ballots and that Harris won every state that doesn’t require voter ID and no states that require it.
USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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