--- title: Donald Trump Says Millions of People Voted Illegally description: Donald Trump falsely claimed he won the popular vote in the presidential election, if so-called 'illegal votes' had not been counted canonical: https://time.com/4582868/donald-trump-people-illegally-voted-election/ author: Mahita Gajanan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-11-27T21:02:12.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T15:30:35.000Z article:section: Politics og:title: With No Evidence Donald Trump Says Millions Voted 'Illegally' og:description: Unfounded claim og:url: https://time.com/4582868/donald-trump-people-illegally-voted-election/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4055c4f0220c7ec7/6988afbcfb4eac8272890040/trump32.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Donald Trump Campaigns In Key States During Weekend Ahead Of General Presidential Election og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: With No Evidence Donald Trump Says Millions Voted 'Illegally' twitter:description: Unfounded claim twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4055c4f0220c7ec7/6988afbcfb4eac8272890040/trump32.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Without Evidence Donald Trump Says Millions of People Voted 'Illegally' in the Election He Won > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Mahita Gajanan](https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/) ## Mahita Gajanan Gajanan is an editor at TIME. Updated: Dec 13, 2023 3:30 PM UTCPublished: Nov 27, 2016 9:02 PM UTC  Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at the Sioux City Convention Center on Nov. 6, 2016 in Sioux City, IO Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at the Sioux City Convention Center on Nov. 6, 2016 in Sioux City, IOChip Somodevilla—Getty Images by [Mahita Gajanan](https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/) ## Mahita Gajanan Gajanan is an editor at TIME. Updated: Dec 13, 2023 3:30 PM UTCPublished: Nov 27, 2016 9:02 PM UTC President-elect Donald Trump made the unfounded claim Sunday he won the [popular vote](http://time.com/4572295/hillary-clinton-popular-vote-lead/) in the presidential election — if millions of so-called “illegal votes” had not been counted. “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he [tweeted](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802972944532209664). There is no [evidence](http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/nov/18/blog-posting/no-3-million-undocumented-immigrants-did-not-vote-/) that millions voted illegally. Tallies of the popular vote show that Hillary Clinton beat Trump by [more than 2 million votes](http://fortune.com/2016/11/23/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-popular-vote/), though Trump won more Electoral College vote and therefor the presidency. “It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4 states instead of the 15 states that I visited,” Trump wrote. “I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)!” > [](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802972944532209664) > [](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802973848022847489) > [](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802975667197386752) The latest tweets came after Trump railed against the [election recount](http://fortune.com/2016/11/23/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-popular-vote/) effort by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, calling it a “scam” and saying “nothing will change.” Stein filed for a [recount in Wisconsin](http://fortune.com/2016/11/25/jill-stein-recount-wisconsin-pennsylvania/) and said she would file for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania as well, after people pointed to [anomalies in voting data](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html) in the three swing states. In a series of Twitter posts on Sunday, the independent investigative news website [ProPublica](https://twitter.com/ProPublica) said its extensive election monitoring had revealed no evidence of systemic fraud, and that for millions of people to vote illegally “would require a conspiracy larger than all previous conspiracy theories combined.” > [](https://twitter.com/ProPublica/status/803022213779689473) > [](https://twitter.com/ProPublica/status/803023072886407173) > [](https://twitter.com/ProPublica/status/803023771124826112) > [](https://twitter.com/ProPublica/status/803023931804450816) > [](https://twitter.com/ProPublica/status/803023990839066625) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4582868/donald-trump-people-illegally-voted-election/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4582868/donald-trump-people-illegally-voted-election/"},"headline":"Without Evidence Donald Trump Says Millions of People Voted 'Illegally' in the Election He Won","datePublished":"2016-11-27T21:02:12.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-13T15:30:35.000Z","description":"Donald Trump falsely claimed he won the popular vote in the presidential election, if so-called 'illegal votes' had not been counted","url":"https://time.com/4582868/donald-trump-people-illegally-voted-election/","keywords":["Donald Trump"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4055c4f0220c7ec7/6988afbcfb4eac8272890040/trump32.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mahita Gajanan","jobTitle":"Gajanan is an editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mahita-gajanan/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4055c4f0220c7ec7/6988afbcfb4eac8272890040/trump32.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Donald Trump Campaigns In Key States During Weekend Ahead Of General Presidential Election","caption":"Donald Trump Campaigns In Key States During Weekend Ahead Of General Presidential Election","creditText":"Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/donald-trump/","name":"Donald Trump"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4582868/donald-trump-people-illegally-voted-election/","name":"Without Evidence Donald Trump Says Millions of People Voted 'Illegally' in the Election He Won"}}]}] ```