But the campaigns were run to win electoral votes. If the rule for winning was popular votes, the campaigns would have been run entirely differently and the results would have been entirely different.

What I do think the results indicate is that neither party is effectively capturing the support of a large majority of Americans. The typical observation is that we are a country divided, but I rather think that there are a large number of Americans who would prefer voting for a synthesis of typical Democratic and Republican policies, but that isn't possible. Some of those people fall on the Democratic side and some fall on the Republic side during an election and that changes depending on the candidates.

This is an important point people dismiss too easily. If the campaigns would have had to focus on popular votes, they would have been run differently. Trump would have given more time to California and Hillary would have campaigned more in Texas, for example.

It's obviously impossible to say what the outcome would have been, but the campaigns definitely would have optimized differently.

In a different universe things would be different. This is always true and I agree with you what you mean in pointing it out. From a human level though he still didn't cross the popular threshold. Regardless of constitutionality that leaves a lot to be desired.

Have they finished counting all the votes yet?

It's very close and the lead switched at least once. We won't know who finally won the popular vote until the counting is done.

California has millions of votes remaining to be counted. Clinton won the popular vote, and probably by a million or two.

it's been getting larger, most of the votes coming in are from larger areas that on average in this election voted for Hillary and 99% of the vote is in (some ballots in some states like California could be counted up to 3 days after end of election if they were postmarked on the day of the election). It's highly unlikely that large pockets of Trump votes would be found to make up 300K+ gap now.

What's even crazier to me is trump has yet to pass Mitt Romney vote total. He didn't even beat the last republican candidate but won the election.

Your last statement is wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12931386

It's not wrong until the totals are final.

or he passes Romney

So... it is wrong and there are still more ballots being counted.

Yeah - but they weren't votes from "real Americans" ;)

I'm not all up on your electoral system but isn't that the whole point of having an electoral college rather than just doing it by simple majority?

Yes, generally speaking.

Direct voting was intentionally discouraged by some of the founders, to prevent the "tyranny of the majority". The goal was to force a candidate to appeal to as many types of people as possible, and not allow someone to just focus on what the simple majority of people want.

It could be argued that in this election the electoral college technically performed the function it was originally designed to do -- that is, give rural areas a small but possible opportunity to out-compete urban ones in an election despite having less total citizens.

In one sense the electoral college worked as intended. Except that it does not function as intended. As intended it was to be a deliberate body that would debate the candidates and decide the next, best president from all options given. It was meant to be a final review process to make sure a tyrant or despot didn't get through, for instance.

It goes to how the election should be interpreted.

Donald Trump is clearly the President-elect of the United States and will become the chief executive of the country.

But that is different than the election demonstrating that he is the ideological leader of a majority of the country.