Trump’s popular vote share drops below 47%, report says

President-elect Joe Biden has won both the popular vote and electoral college at this year’s election

President secured more votes in 2020 than in 2016 — despite reported drop in percentage of overall vote share (Getty Images)

President Donald Trump's share of the popular vote at the 2020 election has fallen below 47 per cent, according to a report.

Despite the drop, he still secured millions more votes than defeated presidential candidates Mitt Romney in 2012 and Hilary Clinton in 2016.

The outgoing president has so far secured 74,115,722 votes — or 46.9 per cent of all ballots counted to date.

Meanwhile Joe Biden, president-elect, picked up 81,056,268 votes — or 51.3 per cent of the 158,073,433 total.

Those figures are according to the latest update from The Cook Political Report's (CPR) 2020 National Popular Vote Tracker.  

Some 19 states have yet to certify their counts, according to the CPR, with all results set to be finalised before the electoral college meets to confirm Mr Biden's win on 14 December.

While Mr Trump lost both the popular vote and EC in 2020, his total share of the ballots is up from the 2016 election.

With turnout this year at a reported 50-year high, the defeated incumbent has so far won some 11 million more votes than he did when defeating then Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, New York Times data shows.

Ms Clinton won 48 per cent of the votes (65,853,625) in 2016 according to the Times data, higher than Mr Trump's 62,985,106 (45.9 per cent) although he won the EC 306 to 232.

In 2012, defeated Republican candidate Mitt Romeny secured 59,134,475 ballots — 47 per cent of the total, according to the data.

So while Mr Romney and Ms Clinton's percentage of the total vote share is so far higher than Mr Trump's, both candidates secured fewer actual votes than Mr Trump did in 2020.

In 2020, Mr Trump secured some 14,981,247 more votes than Mr Romney did in 2012 and 8,262,097 more than Ms Clinton in 2016.

But that increased total was not enough to stop Mr Biden from winning the 2020 election.

He has so far secured 306 EC votes compared to Mr Trump's 232 — an exact reversal of the 2016 result.

Despite the impending defeat, Mr Trump continues to claim, without evidence, that the election was "stolen" from him.

His legal team has launched a number of lawsuits in key battleground states attempting to delay the certification of results or challenge the outcomes.

The latest of those was launched in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Team Trump filed a lawsuit seeking to disqualify more than 221,000 ballots in the state's two most Democratic counties, a longshot attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the battleground state the incumbent president lost by nearly 20,700 votes.

Meanwhile, Mr Biden continues preparing for office and on Tuesday unveiled his economic team.